Cell Phones and a Cashless Society

First Data to Offer Mobile Contactless Payments to Their Customers Beginning as Early as Mid-2010

First Data to offer Tyfone’s SideTap NFC MicroSD cards; will run first trials in US from mid-2010

March 16, 2010

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - The cards "will be sold where consumers buy memory cards today, including retail merchants and major network operators as well as new locations such as mass transit kiosks and financial institution branch locations," says First Data, and "SideTap MicroSD cards may also come pre-bundled in handsets."

First Data has signed an agreement with Tyfone which will see the payments processing giant offering the start-up's MicroSD format NFC solution to customers.

A BlackBerry with SideTap transacts with a First Data contactless terminal

"This is a significant partnership as First Data is committed to mobile commerce and is a leader in the payment industry serving more than five million merchant locations, 2,000 card issuers, and millions of consumers worldwide," says the official announcement.

"The partnership enables a neutral mobile commerce solution to be deployed to millions of consumers," it continues. "Tyfone's technology will support First Data's provisioning role, of a trusted service manager (TSM) using SideTap cards as a neutral secure element... First Data and Tyfone will soon begin the process of working with issuers to enable them to offer mobile contactless payments to their customers. Trials will begin as early as mid-2010."

The news follows Tyfone's announcement earlier this month that it has now completed pre-production testing and is gearing up for mass production during the second half of 2010, and Visa's announcement in February that it is to begin field testing DeviceFidelity's MicroSD NFC solution from the second quarter of this year.

"First Data chose Tyfone's SideTap memory card because it best serves the needs of consumers who want to use contactless payment options with over the air access but still want to retain the memory card functionality of their MicroSD card," says First Data's Dom Morea.

"The move to contactless payments is gaining traction," Morea explains. "Consumers have a strong preference for such technology and merchants are using contactless payments to reduce waiting times, increase customer loyalty, and boost sales."

"While the technology may first be released for the US market, it has worldwide appeal and is not restricted by geography," he told NFC World. "A fully payments-capable MicroSD with an integrated antenna and memory capabilities is a large milestone towards providing mobile commerce capabilities to the significant population of existing and future mobile phones that are MicroSD capable."

SIDETAP: Tyfone offers secure NFC and memory on a MicroSD card

"Tyfone is a technology leader in mobile solutions and brings hardware and software expertise in MicroSD technology, secure element integration and antenna design," Morea continues. "First Data brings expertise in security, payment account provisioning, personalization and account management."

First Data will offer three versions of Tyfone's SideTap MicroSD card to customers, each able to support both Mifare transport ticketing applications and any GlobalPlatform-compliant payments application such as credit, debit, closed loop, prepaid and gift cards:

• The standard SideTap memory card, which offers an initial 1GB of user memory as well as the contactless payments functionality.


• SideTap Lite, which includes OTA provisioning capability but has no additional user memory.


• SideTap Ultralite, a low cost option without additional memory or OTA capabilities, aimed at closed loop applications.

"We expect that these cards will be sold where consumers buy memory cards today, including retail merchants and major network operators as well as new locations such as mass transit kiosks and financial institution branch locations," say the partners. "SideTap MicroSD cards may also come pre-bundled in handsets."

"For consumers, a SideTap MicroSD card is expected to cost about the same as a standard MicroSD card of the same capacity," they add.

"With over 60% of the mobile phones being sold today with memory slots, memory cards are widely used in the mobile eco-system, making it an ideal form factor for issuers to add contactless payment," explains Dr Siva Narendra, Tyfone's chief technology officer. "However, consumers are unlikely to swap between memory card for payment and storage in their phones. So our SideTap cards integrate storage and contactless payments in the same memory card to enhance consumer’s experience."

"Mobile phone users are familiar with memory cards, many of which are bought directly from their mobile network operators," Narendra adds.

"The promise of MicroSD card-powered technology to drive contactless payments is profound, with the ability to very quickly enable mobile transactions for businesses and their customers," adds Henri Ardevol, general manager of secure transactions at NXP, whose SmartMX chips power the SideTap devices.

Blackboard Adds NFC and Contactless Support to Campus Card System

March 8, 2010

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com -Blackboard, which supplies campus card solutions to hundreds of higher education institutes, has launched a new contactless and NFC-compatible version of its Blackboard Transact card system, based on Sony FeliCa contactless technology.

Release 3.6 is a fully integrated technology platform that lets students use their contactless card, or NFC phone, to access secure buildings and facilities, pay for books, meals and laundry, make purchases from vending machines and access events, on and off campus, at significantly faster speeds than with traditional ID technologies.

"We saw Blackboard's contactless solution as a way for us to keep pace with rapidly changing technology by adopting a solution based on industry standards," says Nirmal Palliyaguru, director of access and conference services at Santa Clara University. "We knew that Blackboard Transact would help us solve the challenge of increasing data security and establish a base from which we could expand the platform in years to come. Ultimately we see this technology allowing us to replace campus ID cards with mobile phones and devices as the ID"

"To continually improve the student experience it is critical to methodically innovate and introduce new technologies that meet the increasing demands of today's students and deliver real return on every dollar invested," adds David Marr, president and chief operating officer of Blackboard Transact. "Smart contactless technology meets these criteria by letting institutions support and monitor all commerce and security activity from one place while students enjoy the on demand college experience they've come to expect."

Worldwide NFC Trials, Tests and Live Services Listed

March 9, 2010

NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com - A new page has been added to NFC World that makes it easy to discover details of all the NFC trials that are taking place in each country around the world.

Since NFC World first began reporting on developments in the international near field communication market in October 2008 we have covered nearly 100 NFC pilots, trials, tests and commercial NFC and related services in 38 countries.

NFC trials, pilots, tests and live services around the world provides links to all the articles we have written about NFC tests and commercial launches, organised by country. It is updated whenever we publish an article about a new NFC project or provide an update on the progress of an existing project.

The page also includes, where available, details of market research and other data related to the potential market for NFC and related services in each country.

Quick links at the top of the page make it easy to quickly access articles on a particular country or, alternatively, readers can simply browse through the complete list to gain an overview of the current state of play worldwide.

To start exploring the list visit NFC trials, pilots, tests and live services around the world.