Sprint and BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) with partners Jack in the Box, First Data, and Western Union Speedpay have launched an NFC payment scheme allowing users to pay their fares using their phone. The trial will be conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area from January 2008 to May 2008. More information can be found out at the Sprint website. And if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, maybe you could be eligible to use the phone.  

NXP Semiconductors recently opened a center for showcasing advanced concept and product testing, the Next Experience Lab located in the Netherlands. The new Next Experience Lab, which joins a network of four other centers globally, will allow NXP and its partners, such as BMW, to examine the impact of technologies on consumers, seeking answers to questions such as, how will the convergence of media such as music, TV, video and internet impact consumers of the future? What standards and partner eco-systems are needed to ensure a seamless, compelling user experience?

The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association that advances the use of Near Field Communication technology, is looking for innovative NFC solutions in their competition named Touching the Future: NFC Forum Global Competition. In the competition, developers in a commercial track vie for the honor of having their solutions named “The Best NFC Service of the Year 2008,” while a research track recognizes “The Most Innovative NFC Research Project of the Year 2008.” Focusing on the theme “Innovation at Your Fingertips,” the competition is intended to promote the development and deployment of innovative and exemplary NFC services. Entries will be judged on their innovation, commercial potential and usability, as well as quality of design and implementation.

Robert M. Fee
General Manager North America
LEGIC Identsystems

If last year’s dramatic growth of contactless smart cards and applications is any indication of what is to come, then we are in for another exciting year. The proliferation of the technology and associated standards extend the contactless reach well beyond physical and logical access to high growth markets such as transit, NFC, e-Payments and even the campus card. This upward trend has no ceiling as organizations across the spectrum expand use of their “credential program” to applications that directly impact operations, thereby lowering costs while increasing efficiencies.

NXP Semiconductors and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are jointly presenting seven technological papers at the 2007 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), a forum for the presentation of microelectronic advances. Among the new technology presented by NXP-TSMC Research Center is a new embedded memory technology with superior performance, up to 1000 times faster than traditional non volatile memories, coupled with scalability and reduced power consumption that is also 5-10% cheaper to manufacture than regular embedded memory. This technology will be helpful, for example, to prevent data stream interruptions and increase security of transactions when using NFC (Near Field Communication) to complete mobile payment transactions or content upload.

The Near Field Communication (NFC) Innovation Awards,created by Innovision R&T, are making some university students quite happy. The company launched the competition to find the most innovative uses of NFC enabled phones to efficiently encode RFID tags while only using 96 bytes of memory. Although the competition was open to both university students and business employees, all three of the final designs come from students. Of of the finalists, from the North East Wales Institute (NEWI), designed a new car identification system to help police prevent vehicle crimes. The concept uses NFC tags containing information about the car and the registered driver of the car, which can then be compared to information provided by the driver of the car. The tags will be placed in the bottom right hand corner of car window so they can be easily scanned by officers using Nokia 6131 NFC phones. Innovision R&T hopes the winning design will provide businesses with insight into the opportunities of NFC technology. The full report about the students’ concepts is available at the Evening Leader.  

Nokia is developing a phone that will utilize NFC technology, but not in the way normally thought of. The company is looking for “new ways to help us all reduce our environmental footprint.” To meet this goal, the Nokia Research Center supported by Nokia designers conceived the Nokia Eco Sensor Concept. The visionary design concept is a mobile phone and compatible sensing device that will help you stay connected to your friends and loved ones, as well as to your health and local environment. You can also share the environmental data your sensing device collects and view other users’ shared data, thereby increasing your global environmental awareness.

The concept consists of two parts – a wearable sensor unit which can sense and analyze your environment, health, and local weather conditions, and a dedicated mobile phone.

The sensor unit will be worn on a wrist or neck strap made from solar cells that provide power to the sensors. NFC technology will relay information by touch from the sensors to the phone or to or to other devices that support NFC technology.

All of the details can be viewed at Nokia’s Sustainable Products Site.  

EM Microelectronic, a semiconductor company of the Swatch Group, recently became an associate member of the Near Field Communication (NFC) Forum. EM Microelectronic is involved in developing RFID circuitry that is capable of being used in several areas within NFC. With its roots in the watchmaking industry, EM already has a track record in the production of extremely low-power circuits for various kinds of battery and battery-less operating devices.

Nokia’s venture capital organization has invested US$38 million (EUR$25 million) in INSIDE Contactless. The move is another major endorsement of NFC’s potential from Nokia and the VC markets (Nokia previously invested in ViVOtech’s Series B and C rounds). The money is earmarked for accelerating international presence and broadening the company’s product portfolio.

This could long complicate the introduction of any commercial deployment of NFC. Mobile network operators say they will derive POS payment revenue chiefly from consumer transaction fees. According to recently released research conducted by Aite Group, LLC, 83% of carriers responding to an October survey indicated per-transaction fees charged to users are the most likely way they will get revenues from mobile-payment services. But banks and card networks have always been against sharing transaction fees with mobile operators. And with NFC, the phone carrier networks aren’t even involved in the transaction.