UK-based RFID design firm Innovision Research & Technology has signed a deal with a Chinese smart card vendor. Under the terms of the contract, Innovision will develop and supply custom contactless smart card tag technology for the firm, which works in the contactless smart card and ticketing markets in China. The deal represents Innovision’s first foray into China. 
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USA Technologies has rolled out a series of enhancements to its back-end payment and telemetry service, ePort Connect, that include faster credit and debit card authentication, over-the-air updates for customers using ePort devices, a streamlined device activation process and, coming soon, machine health alerts to notify operators via the Web or email of payment mechanism malfunctions, or out-of-stock conditions. 
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MasterCard Canada, in partnership with Citi Cards Canada and Bell Mobility, has completed the first near-field communications trial of Mobile PayPass in Canada. This was the first trial in Canada to use Bell Mobility’s wireless network enabling participants to make purchases using their mobile device at MasterCard PayPass acceptance locations across Canada. 
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While a Frost & Sullivan study warns of uneven market conditions in the Asia Pacific smart card market, countries with a strong contactless infrastructure already in place shouldn’t see a significant decline in smart card production. In fact, according to the report, some countries in the region, such as Japan and South Korea, have continued to expand and add new projects, particularly in the mobile payments area. 
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Visa has put together a Malaysian partnership that includes a bank, a cell phone manufacturer and a mobile phone carrier to launch its first commercial mobile payments service using NFC technology. Consumers are now able to purchase an NFC-enabled mobile phone off the shelf and use it to make Visa payWave-enabled transactions at the point-of-sale in place of their credit card.

Maxis, Malaysia’s largest wireless carrier with more than 11 million subscribers, handset manufacturer Nokia and Maybank, are the other partners. 
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Scotland-based i4 Product Design has developed for another Scottish company, Tailwind Solutions, a contactless card payment solution for retailers that works in an EMV environment, allowing consumers to pay with their NFC-compliant phones or contactless EMV cards.

The PoS Paddle Tap-It, which launched at the Contactless Intelligence Conference and Exhibition in London last week, is designed to work with all retailers’ existing EMV configurations. 
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AuthenTec, a developer of biometric technology, has announced that ASUS will be including AuthenTec’s fingerprint sensors in its netbooks for increased security. The netbook, a small simplified laptop, is the first of its kind to come standard with fingerprint sensors.