Banks, mobile operators merchants, handset manufacturers and others will have to work together if near field communication will be adopted, according to a research report from the Smart Card Alliance Contactless Payments Council. Eighty-six percent of industry stakeholders believe NFC-based proximity payments will be adopted, and it will happen with a collaboration model bringing the relevant parties together.

But what’s needed to move activities forward are trusted service managers to coordinate the activities of those involved, the report states. There are many issues that still need to be worked out, including final selection of handset and chip standards, merchant enablement, standards for certifying and deploying secure payment applications, and, lastly and most important, development of a model for revenue-sharing arrangements among stakeholders.

NFC mobile payments, for low transactions anyway, are expected to exceed $75 billion globally in the next five years, according to a new study from UK-based Juniper Research. In the second report in its Mobile Payment Markets series, the company found that there is a “significant opportunity” for NFC mobile payment services, chips, phones and supporting services as the market reaches its tipping point over the 2011 to 2013 period.

But, as the report’s author cautioned: The industry still needs “to convince both consumers and merchants of the merits of yet another payment mechanism on top of cash, checks, credit and debit cards, and to allay understandable (even if unfounded) fears and skepticism about the security of the mobile wallet.”

The NFC Forum released two new specifications that lay out how NFC-enabled devices request actions and how data will be transferred between the handsets.

The Generic Control Record Type Definition specification provides a way to request a specific action, such as starting an application or setting a mode on an NFC-enabled device from another NFC device, tag or card through NFC communication.

The Connection Handover specification defines the structure and sequence of interactions that enable two NFC-enabled devices to establish a connection using other wireless communication technologies, such as WiFi or Bluetooth. Connection Handover makes it possible to deploy applications that offer the best of both worlds by combining the simple, one touch setup of NFC with the high-speed communication of Bluetooth or WiFi.

With this capability, for example, users of Bluetooth mobile phones can transfer large data files to one another simply by touching their phones together. The specification also enables developers to choose the protocol, for example WiFi or Bluetooth, for the information to be exchanged. If matching wireless capabilities are revealed during the negotiation process between two NFC-enabled devices the connection can switch to the selected carrier.

By Andy Williams, Contributing Editor

As interest in near field communication grows around the globe, so does the interest from transit agencies. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in San Francisco is an early adopter, examining the technology to see how it works in a transit environment.

“BART is, in essence, the first transit agency in the country to deploy NFC technology which will not only allow patrons to buy tickets, but also to purchase other things,” says James Fang, a member of BART’s board of directors. “I’m very excited about what this technology represents.”

A new cooperative agreement between the GSM Association (GSMA), which brings together the world’s major mobile operators, and the European Payment Council (EPC), which the EU banking sector, could speed the adoption of mobile phone payments, or near field communication, across Europe and the world.

INSIDE Contactless has added Samsung Ventures America to its list of investors, which now includes the world’s top three handset manufacturers. Samsung Ventures joins Nokia Growth Partners and Motorola Ventures, along with other institutional investors, to provide nearly $42 million to enable the company to accelerate its international presence and broaden its product portfolio.

Working toward its goal of leading NFC adoption in the U.K., O2 is conducting trials of NFC technology in the health care and entertainment sectors.

O2 is testing NFC technology to protect visiting health care workers in the field. It has equipped 120 health care workers with NFC handsets for remote community care access. Workers can access patient records on their handsets and log their whereabouts when they are visiting patients to increase their safety while making house calls.

Is the wallet you’re carrying in your back pocket or handbag today getting too bulky? StarHub, Singapore’s second largest info-communications provider, thinks so. The company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NTT DOCOMO, one of Japan’s mobile communications provider, to explore a mobile wallet concept similar to Japan’s Osaifu-Keitai wallet solution for a near future implementation in Singapore.

Osaifu-Keitai means “mobile wallet” in Japanese. It is a trademark of NTT DOCOMO, which launched this service in July 2004, whereby the mobile phone is integrated with a contactless chip to offer mobile payment and transaction services, including the ability to have the phone act as an identity card, fare card for bus and train rides, and a credit and loyalty card. This mobile wallet application is also supported by other mobile service providers and accepted at more than 640,000 stores, making it the standard for mobile wallet services in Japan.

Tyfone is attending FSTC (Financial Services Technology Consortium) 2008 Annual Conference, which starts today and runs through June 19^th in Santa Rosa, California.

Throughout the show, Tyfone will demonstrate its Mobile Financial Services Platform consisting of a mobile banking software suite along with the company’s mobile payments technology.

The company has come up with a different way of enabling mobile payments. Instead of waiting for the handset manufacturers to release devices, Tyfone enables memory card-enabled phones to become capable of contactless payments. With security features implemented directly on the memory card, financial institutions and their customers are not tied to a mobile payments model that relies on a single carrier and a limited selection of handset models.

The public transport authority of the Frankfurt Rhein-Main region (RMV), T-Systems, Nokia and Venyon have announced the next phase for RMV mobile ticketing at the international NFC Forum meeting in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. The new mobile ticketing solution based on Near Field Communication will offer a wider variety of mobile tickets.

RMV introduced its mobile ticketing scheme in 2006. The main target of this new enhancement to the ticketing solution is to enable customers to purchase mobile tickets even more spontaneously and easily. The ticket will now be stored in the embedded secure element of the NFC-enabled mobile phone, and can be inspected just by holding the device close to the inspector’s reading device, which checks the validity of the ticket. This takes only a few milliseconds without any further interaction from the customer.