Stories about: NFC

Short range communication using NFC (Near Field Communication) circuitry embedded in mobile phones has had a difficult journey to market, but it may soon see light at the end of the tunnel with increasing adoption for city transit projects, according to analysts.

Wireless chip maker Broadcom plans to acquire Innovision Research & Technology, which specializes in short-range data communication, for approximately US$47.5 million in cash, Broadcom said on Thursday.

Motorola's new Intelligent SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) just got its start in Europe by powering a parental control application for GSM phones, but it will also be available to enterprises that need to customize mobile phones for a sales force or other application across an entire group of workers.

Tyfone is putting the pieces together for a commercial mobile wallet offering, forming an alliance with First Data.

"If you board the wrong train, it's no use running along the corridor in the other direction," said famed World War II German resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We in IT boarded the wrong train a long time ago. It's the "standard model" of information technology organizations - the familiar litany that says CIOs should run IT as a business, meeting the requirements of its internal customers. This refrain has been endorsed by our holy trinity, too: analyst firms, most consultancies and ITIL.

The mobile phone is turning into the platform of choice for banking in emerging markets. In developed markets, however, the phone has struggled to compete with existing payment methods, and the challenges aren't going away in 2010.

Money transfers and payments over mobile phones will be among the top 10 most important mobile applications by 2012, market research company Gartner said on Wednesday.

Nokia is getting ready to launch Nokia Money, which will offer basic financial services on mobile phones, it said on Wednesday.

The U.K. aims to have a plan by the end of this year that lets people use their mobile phones or smart cards to pay for travel across England's public transport system.

I just finished watching the PayPal Platform Preview, which was PayPal's official announcement of their new open development platform (it was previously leaked on TechCrunch). Officially called "PayPal X," the platform was presented by Osama Bedier (VP of platform and emerging technology) in broad, almost utopian terms, as something that would unleash waves of innovation transforming the way goods and services are delivered. Maybe.