Cell Phones and a Cashless Society

RFID News Roundup

February 18, 2010

RFID Journal - The following are news announcements made during the past week.

• Sagem Wireless' New Cosyphone Incorporates NFC Technologies Inside Contactless has announced the first deployment of its portfolio of Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies in a commercially available NFC handset.

  All three of the company's core NFC offerings—the MicroRead NFC controller chip, the Open NFC protocol stack and the Wave-Me handset client software—are integrated in the Cosyphone, a new NFC mobile phone from French firm Sagem Wireless.

  The Cosyphone leverages Inside Contactless' NFC technologies to simplify access to the phone's features, and enables users to make calls, send text messages or access data services such as weather or traffic information, simply by waving the phone near an NFC tag or smart poster.

  "The Cosyphone is the embodiment of our vision of enhanced NFC services," said Andre Ponton, Inside Contactless' VP of key accounts, in a prepared statement, "going beyond traditional payment and transit fare transactions to actually making the phone easier to use by simplifying access to functions and services."

  According to Ponton, the MicroRead chip's self-powered battery-off mode and low-power NFC tag-detection features will help improve the user experience of the Cosyphone, by enabling payment or other transactions to take place successfully even when the handset is turned off, or when the battery is completely drained.

  With Inside Contactless' Wave-Me technology in the Cosyphone, users can access relevant, profile-based services with a simple waving gesture near an NFC tag or smart poster, and that can automatically simulate a series of keystrokes. NFC tags and smart posters may contain relevant phone numbers or complex URLs to send SMS text messages or instruct the phone to send and retrieve information from Web sites. The Cosyphone will be available early in the third quarter of 2010, the company reports, and will be sold through mobile network operators.

• Visa, DeviceFidelity Partner on Mobile Payment Solution Credit card company Visa has teamed up with DeviceFidelity, a Dallas, Texas, contactless payment firm.

  The duo indicate they will market a solution that can enable a mobile phone with a memory card slot to be used as a Visa mobile-payment device. The solution combines Visa's contactless payment technology, Visa payWave, and DeviceFidelity's In2Pay technology to transform a mobile phone with a microSD memory slot into a mobile contactless payment device. According to the two companies, this can enable consumers to make mobile Visa payWave transactions at any retail location that accepts contactless payments ...

  Visa and DeviceFidelity expect to begin trials of their solution in the second quarter of this year.

  "Through our collaboration with DeviceFidelity, Visa is helping to accelerate the adoption of mobile contactless payments and pave the way for the global deployment of NFC-enabled devices," said Dave Wentker, Visa's head of mobile contactless payments, in a prepared statement.

  In addition to DeviceFidelity, the credit card company is also working with several key technology providers and strategic alliance partners to test and deploy the solution, including CPI Card Group, Inside Contactless, Monitise and NXP Semiconductors.



• NFC Mobile Phone Trial Gets Underway in Slovenia Several more companies have stepped up to participate in the GSM Association's Pay-Buy-Mobile Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phone initiative, this time in Slovenia.

  The GSM Association comprises more than 700 GSM mobile phone operators around the world. The organization first launched its series of NFC-enabled mobile phone trials about two years ago, starting in France, Taiwan and Turkey (see Cell Phone Service Providers Start Global NFC Initiative).

  The newest field trial is being conducted by Banka Koper, part of Italian financial group Intesa Sanpaolo, along with Cassis International, Inside Contactless, Sagem Orga and Sagem Wireless, in cooperation with Mobitel, a mobile service provider in Slovenia. The trial includes a payment infrastructure, applications and handsets, and is scheduled to run through June 2010.

  Using their Mobitel handsets, participants in the trial will be able to make purchases at any merchant locations in Slovenia that accept MasterCard and Maestro PayPass contactless payment cards. Participants will also be able to utilize a set of interactive mobile services based on smart posters, including contextual information, advertisements and coupons ...