INSIDE Contactless announced a technology partnership to provide critical NFC technology to Paris-based MobiNear, a provider of proximity mobile communications solutions.

Through this cooperation, INSIDE is providing NFC reading capabilities to enhance the MobiNear Box kiosk, which will now be able to let people use their contactless transportation cards and NFC-enabled mobile phones to access MobiNear’s PayGO platform for a range of payment, loyalty, access control and identification services. 

GlobalPlatform, the international specification body for smart card infrastructure, has announced American Express as its newest full member. The payment system’s initial focus will be to participate in GlobalPlatform’s current standardization efforts to support the convergence of the payment and mobile technical landscapes.

American Express joins GlobalPlatform to have an active role in developing specifications for the entire smart card infrastructure. Its participation complements American Express’ current work with EMVCo, the EMV standards body which it jointly operates alongside JCB, MasterCard and Visa to develop and maintain the EMV Specifications for the global payments industry. 

MasterCard Worldwide has launched one of the world’s largest NFC pilots in Bengaluru, India along with Citibank, Nokia and Vodafone. The pilot, one of several the credit card giant has underway in the Asia Pacific region, hopes to identify the level of consumer acceptance with contactless payments, particularly via mobile phones.

Consumers participating in the Indian trial will enjoy promotional offers such as discounts at various popular retail establishments, including department stores, food courts at shopping malls and office buildings, restaurants and fast food chains, bookstores and multiplexes.

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French technology company Twinlinx, created by two former executives of INSIDE Contactless, has rolled out what it calls an NFC sticker that will run on the new Windows smart phone due out next month. The company’s MyMax sticker also offers backward compatibility with the earlier Windows Mobile 6.1 version. 

Dynamic Card Solutions, an Englewood, Colo. provider of instant issuance and PIN selection solutions, has named Guy Berg its director of advanced payment technologies. In this role, Berg, formerly president of Collis America, a payments industry consultant, will help lead product development of Dynamics’ smart card instant issuance and PIN change solutions. 

Tyfone, a Portland, Ore. provider of mobile NFC payments/secure transaction capabilities, says it has received a U.S. patent for its electronic transaction card that allows a memory card to be used as an electronic wallet or for the secure transmission of financial information.

This technology is part of the company’s u4ia (euphoria) mobile financial services platform, which completed successful beta testing in June. 

The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association seeking to advance the use of NFC technology, announced several accomplishments from its recent all-members meeting in Oulu, Finland.

These included a Plugfest, where NFC Forum member companies successfully tested the interoperability of their technologies with those of their peers, a validation test of the forum’s logical link control protocol candidate specification and the selection of two test tool vendors to partner with the forum in developing compliance testing equipment.