Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest financial institution, has begun a commercial trial of SIM-based NFC mobile payments, reports NFC World.

The service, dubbed “Move and Pay,” is being tested among 600 Intesa Sanpaolo employees and customers in Milan and Turin, as well as by two academic institutions: The Polytechnic Institute of Milan and Turin ISMB. 

On Track Innovations has received a U.S. patent for adding contactless capability to existing mobile handsets through contactless SIM technology.

U.S. Patent No. 8,090,407, aka “Contactless Smart SIM,” covers the capabilities necessary to turn existing mobile handsets into NFC-enabled devices through the use of a SIM card and a specifically designed antenna, all while keeping the phone and operating system “fully agnostic,” says OTI. 

EMV in the U.S. won’t be chip and PIN but instead a new technology that takes advantage of the online infrastructure available in the U.S., according to Stephanie Ericksen, head of Authentication Product Integration at Visa USA.

In the U.S. payment transactions are authorized in real time. In other countries this connectivity doesn’t exist which brings up the need for a PIN for further authorization.

“At the time EMV was created, the cost and complexity of connecting a merchant POS device to some telecommunication networks was prohibitive. The way around that was to introduce ‘floor limits’ and create a magnetic stripe alternative – EMV chip-and-PIN – as a counter to potential fraud,” Ericksen states in a blog post. 

Inside Secure has launched a free, open-source NFC protocol stack for Google’s new Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” mobile operating system.

According to Inside, Open NFC 4.3.3 is compliant with the Ice Cream Sandwich release Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) for NFC, and supports all the latest Android NFC features, including Android Beam and WiFi Direct pairing connection. 

Sony has unveiled a new line of NFC Xperia SmartTags that can be used with NFC-enabled phones to perform a variety of functions, according to CNet.

Designed to streamline ordinary tasks on smart phones, Sony’s SmartTags can be programmed by the user to automatically launch a particular app or turn on/off WiFi or Bluetooth with a simple tap of the phone, for example. 

Japanese mobile operator KDDI has announced that it will launch NFC-based commercial services with Japan Airlines, credit card issuers, retailers and loyalty program providers, reports NFC World.

Set to launch as early as the end of January, KDDI’s NFC technology will enable users to make contactless mobile payments from credit or prepaid accounts, redeem coupons and tickets, use loyalty and membership cards, read NFC tags and make peer-to-peer transactions. 

One of the most exciting things that will happen in the next year or two is the confluence of a few major trends. It’s exciting because, together, they promise to make security and identity better and more manageable than it has been in the past.

Before I start, let me point out that these end-of-year articles, talking about the year ahead, often pretend that nothing happened the past 12 months. But these changes are happening now. They’ve been happening for a while. Furthermore, it’s not going to be complete in 2012. By the time 2015 rolls around, we’ll look back at 2012 and say that’s when it really took off.

The first of these changes is BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) computing. BYOD is a much better term than “consumerization” and really portrays the meaning that many of us are buying smart phones, tablets or laptops to use them on a work network. The tension this creates is predictable.