NFC Forum members show of NFC solutions in Frankfurt

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NFC Forum members show of NFC solutions in Frankfurt

The NFC Forum and some of its members are showing off some NFC solutions over in Frankfurt, Germany this next week. But why? At the end of the day, NFC is just another secure little protocol that has the added ability to work with tags just like its older brother, RFID. It is pretty cool in and of itself, but really nothing to get overly excited about. Strange that coming from us? Not really. We have never been enchanted by the actual technology as it is nothing new or remarkable outside of the fact that a radio frequency can power a small chip and antenna with nothing more than a radio field. NFC operates at 13.56 MHz. Data speeds range from 106 kbit/s to 848 kbit/s. NFC Tags only store small amounts of information, currently between 96 and 512 bytes of memory. Kind of a dry subject matter, eh? It isn’t that NFC isn’t an interesting technology, but it is hardly as bleeding edge as quantum computers and hadron colliders.

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Sequent launches CCS and brings NFC capabilities to apps

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Sequent launches CCS and brings NFC capabilities to apps

The Sequent Software management team have formerly held positions within large corporate entities such as AT&T, Visa and VivoTech and been responsible for deployment of various NFC trials and technology. However, the firm has now released an NFC SDK, for lack of a better word, so that all app developers can add NFC to any apps. That CCS (Core Card Services) product includes the capabilities to add NFC payments, NFC ticketing, coupons and access control.

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Narian shows off NFC retail experience solutions at NRF show

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Narian shows off NFC retail experience solutions at NRF show

Yes, the NRF show has just finished up and Narian Technologies was on the floor showing off its full suite of non-payment NFC services that help retailers maximize profits cost effectively. If you are an NFC enthusiast and haven’t heard of Narian Technologies we only have one thing to say to you – Have you been living under a rock for the last year or so? Narian is far older than a year old though, and led by industry expert, Einar Rosenberg. When Narian isn’t helping the top names in NFC develop new products, services or simply giving consulting services, the firm is hard at work developing and deploying its own full suite of retail services that use NFC to prevent lost sales and maximize profit in retail situations.

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Inside Secure supports new Kovio RF Barcode ready NFC tags

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Inside Secure supports new Kovio RF Barcode ready NFC tags

Inside Secure has announced that it now supports the Kovio RF Barcode ready NFC tags in its Open NFC protocol stack. Okay, that may be a bit of a clunky headline, so allow us to explain why this is big news and what it means for the adoption of NFC on the whole. The overall goal of NFC tags has been to allow them to become very cost effective, especially for retail usage. The concept that has been flying around over the last few years has been printed NFC tags that use printed silicon to achieve mass market penetration at a fraction of the cost of conventional NFC tags.

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WIMA NFC Monaco 2012 calls for papers to be submitted

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WIMA NFC Monaco 2012 calls for papers to be submitted for its 2012 6th Global NFC Applications Products & Services Congress

As we mentioned in our last post WIMA Monaco is getting closer and here is the opportunity to present in front of delegates at the conference or have your paper published in the conference programme. WIMA generally attracts attendees and speakers from every facet of the burgeoning NFC ecosystem. This year there is also opportunities for Near Field Communication solution providers to make a joint presentation with an end user partner.

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NFC Forum and WIMA Monaco call for entries for NFC competition

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NFC Forum and WIMA Monaco call for entries for the Tap Into Innovation: NFC Global Competition 2012

WIMA Monaco is coming up fast, and in our small but rapidly growing industry we like to call NFC, it’s kind of a big deal to win an award at WIMA. The NFC Forum and WIMA get together and put on the Tap Into Innovation: NFC Global Competition every year, and more than a few companies apply for the honor. So, if your firm thrives on being recognized as an innovator in the NFC space and you want your profile raised, it probably wouldn’t hurt you too much to enter the WIMA competition.

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VeriFone completes Point acquisition, NFC payments all around

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VeriFone completes Point acquisition solidifying the firm’s position in Northern Europe and also refinances some debt ready for NFC adoption by retailers

VeriFone appears to be growing larger and larger as today’s news announces that the firm has just completed its merger of Northern European payment gateway company Point. VeriFone has taken some stick lately when the expected NFC bonanza didn’t come in the 3rd quarter of last year. That fact is that NFC adoption by retailers is largely out of VeriFone’s hands as the wallet wars obstruct earlier deployment and therefore the need for NFC POS terminals. However, that isn’t preventing VeriFone from readying itself for the expected new NFC payments landscape as the firm continues to buy up competitors in strategic markets.

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Privacy Goes Public: Sharing Privacy for a Discount

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Privacy Goes Public: Sharing Privacy for a Discount

First things first – let’s get a little public with this privacy issue, shall we? For most people privacy starts where personal freedom ends. Yet there are many more complexities to the word, from personal snooping to sharing data online. Our focus today – sharing data and privacy. Consumers are concerned with privacy. True. But does that mean they are not willing to share it? False. Face it – as we continue to increase our social status as a global society, the more information we will inevitably share. Disturbing, right? It’s nothing new though. Who doesn’t own a loyalty card for a local grocery or retail store? Your data is held here and collected under your profile so they can ensure they offer products that fit your needs according to your shopping habits. Can we say “Facebook”? If you own a debit card, your bank knows your spending and buying patterns. Heck, they may know your habits better than you do. So, what is all the privacy fuss about?

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Verifone takes an NFC stock beating, perhaps unfairly

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Verifone takes an NFC stock beating, perhaps unfairly, due to unrealistic market expectations

We all know who Verifone is if we are interested in NFC mobile wallets and NFC payments. They are undoubtedly the largest player in the NFC point-of-sale business globally, and they are involved in most NFC payment projects on some level in the very complex ecosystem. However, Verifone has recently taken a painful beating on its stock price, which we can see between December 5th, when it traded at $44 a share, to December 14th, when it had fallen to just $35 per share. Ouch! Their fourth quarter earnings call wasn’t even until December 14th, so something is happening in the perception of Verifone’s viability to turn a profit. We are not going to go into P/E growth and other associated investment indicators in this post; we want to concentrate more on why this has happened to Verifone versus the reality of the situation. This perception that investors are adopting also has larger scale impacts on the rest of the NFC industry and Verifone may just be the fall guy that kicks off something grander in scale.

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ISIS tries to run internationally before masters crawling domestically

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ISIS tries to run internationally before masters crawling domestically

ISIS has said in an interview with Bloomberg that it has held discussions to explore international opportunities for their particular NFC mobile wallet and trusted service manager services. ISIS, as you probably know by this point, is a joint venture between AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile with one aim to control NFC mobile wallets and NFC payments for member mobile network operators subscribers. ISIS hasn’t launched anything at this point, and from the rumors we are hearing from industry insiders, they haven’t been able to put together a secure NFC mobile wallet despite putting pen to paper with C-Sam (a very capable NFC mobile wallet all by itself), Gemalto, and various other payment providers who include Visa, MasterCard, AMEX and Discover.

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Coke uses Clear Channel for NFC marketing campaign in Singapore

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Coke uses Clear Channel for NFC marketing campaign in Singapore

Coca-Cola has launched an NFC marketing campaign in Singapore with ClearChannel that uses NFC stickers to interact with consumers’ NFC smartphones. The Coke campaign reputedly runs on Mobile Life!, which is ClearChannel’s NFC enabled network.

The NFC marketing campaign’s aim is to push Coke brands in a Christmas push for sales. The NFC marketing campaign ads are being displayed on bus shelters in Singapore and users simply tap their NFC smartphones against the NFC hotspot to gain the ability to download Christmas themed wallpapers and a special Fanta ringtone that echoes the music in a Fanta TV commercial in Singapore. Marketing-Interactive reports that the campaign also includes QR codes for folks who don’t have an NFC smartphone as yet.

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NFC tags market to be worth $300 million in next five years says ABI Research

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NFC tags market to be worth $300 million in next five years says ABI Research

ABI Research has released a report that forecasts that NFC Smart Posters and mobile marketing could push the non-payment NFC tags market to a $300 million per year business by 2016. If you hang around the NFC industry for more than a nanosecond, you will soon become aware what a big deal NFC tags are. NFC tags are used in every non-payment, non-device iteration that NFC has to offer; including NFC stickers, NFC smart posters and even NFC stationary.

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UPM RFID & Waldemar Winckel offer NFC tags in Touch2go store

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UPM RFID & Waldemar Winckel offer NFC tags in Touch2go store

Today Europeans have another place to buy NFC tags from after UPM RFID and Waldemar Winckel, one of Europe’s leading RFID label manufacturers and system integrators, have got together to provide NFC tags through the Touch2go e-commerce store. Part of NFC tags becoming ubiquitous is having them available from many retailers in the market. UPM RFID have arguably formed more relationships and set up more partnerships than any other NFC tag manufacturer.

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Seven barriers to the growth of NFC mobile payments?

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Seven barriers to the growth of NFC mobile payments?

BillingViews today published a report / presentation called “The Seven Barriers to Mobile Payment Adoption” that primarily focuses on NFC payments and adds a dash of QR codes for good measure. BillingViews describes itself as “the global home for billing expertise and intelligence in the communications and media industries.” We can’t say we are feeling the report and disagree with it on a few levels. We do agree that there are barriers, we are just a little at odds with some of BilliingViews’ seven reasons.

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The Consumer’s Perception: 5 Fundamental Rules of Engagement for NFC

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The Consumer’s Perception: 5 Fundamental Rules of Engagement for NFC

What initiates engagement more than a need to connect? A need for a positive review, an inquiry, a complaint or even a purchase. Specifically, what opportunities for engagement of the consumer is there for near field communication (NFC) and why is the ongoing perception so weak? Near field communication is quite a ways from being a household name, especially in North America. Even with In-Stat, an NFC chip manufacturer, predicting 1.2 billion NFC chips to be shipped by 2015, which is 30% global penetration claiming more than 375 million people, NFC would appear to be quite a popular buzz word — that is a lot of chips! Yet, in the UK, for example, in a survey conducted by Opinion Matters for Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, it states only 32% of the consumers interviewed were familiar with NFC. Could you imagine what that number would be in the US?

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The fall and rise of ViVOtech, their NFC ecosystem and your pink slip

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If ViVOtech is not on your short list for NFC POS terminals, wallets and other services you should be fired!

ViVOtech – they’re the firm that sells NFC POS terminals, right? Wrong. Gone are the days where ViVOtech can be categorized as just a payments hardware firm who have niched themselves in NFC. These days ViVOtech are an NFC ecosystem unto themselves. After parting ways with Verifone, ViVOtech found themselves between a rock and a hard place. From what we hear had that old problem of more cash going out than was coming in. No different to most of America at this point then!

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Aditux demos NFC payments iCarte solution and more

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Aditux demos NFC payments iCarte solution

We like covering Aditux because the firm is always up to something new. We imagine their dev labs being like that of a mad professor with projects going on all over the place. From Nokia apps, to NFC tag management and writing software, Aditux crosses industries and sectors developing innovative solutions that use NFC. We met up with the CEO of Aditux, Jayden Khakurel, to find out about their latest and greatest project that moves Aditux into the NFC payments sector, and to see what the firm had developed.

Aditux has been working with the iCarte iPhone case to develop some NFC payments software for both retailers and consumers. Obviously with Apple not including NFC in the iPhone 4S, this has given developers a great opportunity to write NFC mobile wallet apps without competing with Cupertino at this point. What we like about the Aditux wallet is the fact it isn’t reliant on the iCarte system but allows all current iOS users to conduct NFC payments now.

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The big question is where is the money in NFC?

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The big question on attendees’ minds at the WIMA NFC USA conference – where is the money in NFC?

We want to look at a major question that is being asked again and again in the NFC industry – where is the money in NFC? The NFC Rumors team headed over to San Francisco last week for the WIMA NFC USA conference, hence why the site has been a little quiet while we were away. The WIMA conference was a success with great participation from firms from across the nascent NFC industry. Like with many industry specific conferences, attendees either had NFC products and services themselves or concepts they are attempting to fund. Two main themes appeared consistently with nearly everyone we spoke with.

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Proximiant NFC digital receipts just gets better for retailers

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Proximiant NFC digital receipts just gets better for retailers

We reported on the new NFC startup firm, Proximiant, a few days ago and looked into their NFC digital receipts and NFC marketing program. Since then, we have had the opportunity to be in contact with the CEO of the firm and have learned more about the service. In fact, what we learned is all good for retailers and consumers, so here is the latest. We thought perhaps that the NFC reader might cost retailers a small fortune to implement, but not so. That NFC reader that gives retailers all of those new capabilities comes free when signing up for Proximiant’s NFC digital receipts and marketing service.

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Proximiant NFC digital receipts and coupons works on non-NFC phones

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Proximiant NFC digital receipts and coupons even works on non-NFC phones thanks to free NFC tag based sticker

Proximiant has launched a NFC based service that allows you to collect and organize receipts and receive coupons and loyalty cards based on your proximity to stores. The Mountain View start-up has built a really innovative and useful service that allows retailers to offer NFC digital receipts to customers without upgrading their whole POS system. This results in saving paper and allowing retailers to offer loyalty programs, coupons, and allows customers to manage receipts via free Android and iOS applications. All a retailer needs to do to start offering the service is plug in the USB based reader that Proximant offers and configure their offers within the online account. Proximiant supplies NFC based stickers so your customers don’t even need an NFC phone to use the service and collect NFC digital receipts.

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GSMA Mobile Network Operators commit to supporting NFC

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GSMA Mobile Network Operators commit to supporting NFC on their networks

The GSMA are reporting that 45 Mobile Network Operators around the world have committed to supporting NFC. This comes on the back of the GSMA publishing mobile NFC specifications to drive interoperability. Both China Mobile and China Unicom have joined the growing list of MNOs that have agreed to support SIM based NFC solutions. Those two MNOs alone account for a whopping 800 million subscribers who will be able to use NFC secure services using a single-wire protocol solution. We are not sure that SIM based NFC is the best, but with over 45 MNOs globally supporting Near Field Communication, it is a step in the right direction for adoption.

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MPI Label Systems adds NFC tags to its product offering

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MPI Label Systems adds NFC tags to its product offering

MPI Label Systems has announced that it is adding NFC tags to its product lines, further bolstering its already solid RFID labels. We are now starting to see solid converting partners in the NFC tags space. Companies like UPM RFID and Avery Dennison manufacture NFC tags, but it’s the converting partners of these manufacturers who inlay NFC tags into stickers, labels, business cards and flyers. Until the last few months, converters have been thin on the ground.

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INSIDE Secure uses NFC chip security to catch out fake product peddlers

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INSIDE Secure uses NFC chip security to catch out fake product peddlers

INSIDE Secure has announced its VaultIC150 NFC chip security solution that is designed to be embedded in high ticket consumer products. An expected use of NFC has always been to be enable manufacturers to authenticate their genuine products to retailers and consumers, and to give consumers the power to tell a cloned product from an original. We have seen solutions hit the market already, including the NFC reactive imprinted electronic labels from PragmatIC Printing, that are designed to act as authentication in high ticket items. However, we haven’t seen a mass production NFC chip product that can be embedded within products cost effectively until now.

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UPM RFID launches NFCtags.com helps educate consumers and businesses

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UPM RFID launches NFCtags.com helps educate consumers and businesses

NFCtags.com launches to educate consumers and business on NFC and list UPM RFID partners at the same time. If you have been following NFC for a while, you would have heard of UPM RFID. They make NFC tags among other RFID products. What you may not know is the firm is on a never ending quest to educate and find new and innovative uses for NFC that both utilizes NFC tags and applications outside of NFC tags. As part of their never ending quest to promote NFC and spur on adoption, UPM RFID has launched NFCtags.com.

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Saks Fifth Avenue say consumers need to be educated on NFC payments

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Saks Fifth Avenue say consumers need to be educated on NFC payments

Saks Fifth Avenue thinks Google Wallet and NFC mobile wallets are the next big thing. However, at the Mobile Shopping Fall conference, Larry Glenn, Senior Director of Application Development of Saks Direct at Saks Fifth Avenue, said that he felt that NFC mobile wallets like Google Wallet are the next big thing in mobile commerce, but somebody forgot to tell the consumer about it. He has a point!

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