Intel announces NFC support in Ivy Bridge chips

Intel announces NFC support in Ivy Bridge

We are here at CES and Intel has announced that all Ivy Bridge chips will support NFC. Ultrabooks have a massive presence at CES this year and Intel has thrown its weight fully behind NFC, and more specifically for payments in its Ivy Bridge chipset. NFC just got a boost beyond the reach of carriers and MNOs, which will no doubt spur a new line of innovation that extends beyond hardware and is very likely to change e-commerce forever. Intel announced that its Ivy Bridge chips will featured within 50 – 75 Ultrabooks hitting the market in 2012, and we can only expect this figure to grow as the year goes on.

Intel demos NFC payments in Ivy Bridge

We actually got to see Intel’s Mooly Eden conduct an NFC payment on an Ultrabook using an EMV PayPass card. The transaction went smoothly and we are hoping to catch up with Intel and and find out more about how it intends to incorporate NFC into its products throughout 2012. What we are seeing is a real representation of NFC at CES this year, and even companies who don’t currently have NFC products are telling us that we can expect to see the technology incorporated very soon. We are not sure apart from MasterCard which other payment companies are in on the act, and we’ll bring you more as we learn it.

We saw Intel upgrade its membership to the NFC Forum last month and we are now waiting to see what part of the NFC payments ecosystem Intel wants for itself. At this point, we are not sure if Intel is an enabler or if it is looking to control its own NFC payments. What is for sure is that with Ivy Bridge supporting NFC in all Ultrabooks we have just seen another boost to Near Field Communication that will see the nascent technology become a household name throughout 2012.