Global financial services consultancy Edgar, Dunn & Company (EDC) has released its report on the Citi Tap and Pay pilot service launched in the city of Bengaluru, India in July 2009.

Conceived by Citi Growth Ventures and spearheaded by Citibank India, in collaboration with Nokia, Vodafone, MasterCard and ViVotech, Citi Tap and Pay offered customers in Bengaluru the ability to make contactless purchases with their mobile phones. ▸

Tyfone has announced the completion of its SideTap MicroSD memory card line, allowing customers to quickly and easily add mobile wallet functionality to their cell phones.

SideTap MicroSD memory cards can be used in any phone with a MicroSD slot, regardless of the operating system, at any contactless payment terminal worldwide. ▸

GlobalPlatform, has released an amendment to its Card Specification v2.2m, designed to improve the management of multiple contactless applications within a secure element, such as a SIM, secure memory card, or a simple contactless card.

The amendment addresses how end-users can manage contactless services on a secure element, and outlines how the mobile phone interface can be tailored by the card issuer to meet its needs and those of service providers, including the storage of commercial logos to enable simple brand recognition on a mobile phone screen. ▸

by Ed McKinley, Contributing Editor, AVISIAN Publications

Los Angeles dazzles, New York overwhelms and Chicago gets the job done on broad shoulders. But don’t look to America’s urban behemoths for the latest in payments technology. Tiny La Junta, Colo.–until now known mainly for melons, corn and cattle–is becoming one of the nation’s first hotbeds of open-loop, community-oriented, rewards-based wireless debit payments.

Some 500 customers of The State Bank of La Junta automatically debit their checking accounts when they tap their cell phones on dedicated readers at more than 50 participating businesses in and around La Junta. Their town, a county seat of 8,000 residents far from the ski slopes and in the middle of relatively flat southeastern Colorado, could become a model for the nation, observers say.

A contactless chip in a Bling Nation sticker attached to their cell phones exchanges radio signals with the reader to pay for anything from a steak at Boss Hogg’s Saloon, a trim at the I Need Fabulous salon or a fill-up at any of the area’s five Tank N Tummy C-Stores. ▸

A new product called RosettaStone has just been released, enabling bereaved to provide more information about departed loved ones on gravestones, according to slashgear.com.

The device, which is a small polymer stick-on tag called a Data Tag, uses NFC technology to send images and texts to visitors’ smart phones when passed in front of the grave. ▸

The Shanghai Municipal Publicity Department and China Unicom just signed a framework agreement to provide customers with mobile video, mobile music, e-books and NFC-enabled mobile payment.

The precise details of the agreement remain undisclosed. ▸

Nokia has canceled plans to issue 6216 classic handsets with built-in NFC technology, according to electronista.com.

The 6216 would have been Nokia’s first phone to feature a built-in NFC module that communicates with its SIM card using the Single Wire Protocol (SWP). Nokia has two other NFC-enabled phones that do not feature the SWP technology. ▸