Liza Landsman has resigned as Citigroup’s U.S. head of online and mobile banking after only a year of directing its consumer internet and mobile division, according to finextra.com.

A Citi employee since 2000, Landsman helped Citi roll out a bevy of cutting-edge projects, including mobile banking apps, the Citi Shopper bargain-hunting app, and contactless payment stickers. 

NFC enables artists to add rich media to exhibits

by Ryan Clary, Contributing Editor, AVISIAN Publications

Le Centre Pompidou, Paris’s goliath, industrial-chic contemporary art gallery, is looking to shake up the museum experience for Generation Z. By next year, visitors to Pompidou’s planned Teen Gallery, as well as the old city center of Nice, will be using smart phones to interact with works of art, learn about historical sites, and even leave comments about the attractions and share relevant media in a social network setting, à la Facebook or Twitter.

The concept, called Smart Muse, revolves around Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. When approaching a work of art or historical site, users pass an NFC-enabled handset over a corresponding contactless smart card tag and voilà–information regarding the point of interest automatically pops up on the tourist’s phone complete with video and audio. 

Tyfone, provider of NFC enabled Memory Cards for mobile financial services, today announced that their Managing Director, APAC, Prabhakar Tadepalli, will be presenting on the evolution and vision for mobile contactless payments at the first forum on alternative NFC mobile payment solutions held in Taiwan on Sept. 8-9.

Tadepalli will address the current mindset in the industry and how alternative solutions are helping nourish the ecosystem to go beyond trials and for consumer deployments in 2011. 

Apple has hired NFC expert Benjamin Vigier as its new product manager for mobile commerce, suggesting that the next gen iPhone may feature mobile wallet capabilities, according to Computerworld.

Vigier has been active in the NFC field since 2004, previously serving as product manager for mobile wallet, payment and NFC at mFoundry, where he developed both PayPal Mobile and Starbucks’ bar code-based mobile payments service. 

RBS-owned NatWest and Telifonica’s O2 have broken their partnership, calling into question the future of NFC payments in the UK, according to internetretailing.net.

Datamonitor analyst Giles Ubaghs says, “NatWest’s move away from its joint venture with O2 is likely due to the wider difficulties with government-owned RBS. With austerity becoming a growing concern in the public sector, NatWest’s focus on its core services is perhaps unsurprising.” 

eNational Payments, a provider of mobile and contactless electronic commerce and payment processing services, has a entered into a strategic partnership with Mocapay, enabling its merchants and retailers access to Mocapay’s secure mobile payments solution and mobile marketing engine to reach customers in real-time.

eNational Payments currently provides financial services, including check warranty and back office conversion, to more than 2,800 non-banking financial services businesses, collectively processing over $9 billion. 

AT&T and Verizon will launch trials of their new contactless payment system - codenamed Mercury - at markets in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas according to fiercemobilecontent.com.

Participating customers will be able to pay for a variety of goods and services with NFC-enabled smart phones operating on Discover Financial Services’ payment network.