nfc

The mobile and banking industries have been all abuzz lately about offering consumers the ability to pay for items through their cell phones. But how do consumers actually feel about this?

Survey results released yesterday by MasterCard tried to gauge how comfortable people would be using their cell phones to pay for items on the go at stores, restaurants, and other retail outlets. And like many surveys focused on new technologies, this one showed a fairly big gap in feelings between the young and the not-as-young.

Among those 18 to 34 years old, 63 percent said they would be at … Read more

You may soon be able to pay for dinner at your favorite restaurant directly through your cell phone courtesy of a new NFC system slated to become available later this year.

Announced today by electronic payment company VeriFone and software developer Micros Systems, the new system would tap into the growing technology of near field communication (NFC) to let customers pay for dinner bills through a digital wallet stored on their mobile devices.

By storing credit card and bank account information, cell phones equipped with the necessary NFC technology can exchange information with other equipped phones as well NFC-based registers … Read more

Apple's next iPhone will not be getting a near field communications (NFC) chip, according to a new report from analyst group Bernstein Research.

That report, picked up by Bloomberg and care of Business Insider, comes more than a year after signs surfaced that Apple was exploring the use of NFC chips in its mobile devices. Reports since then have been conflicting, with some saying the feature would arrive in the next device, and others pushing it out to the version after that.

NFC allows data transfer between two devices at short distances (about 4 inches). For phones and other … Read more

Visa is planning to launch a new type of digital wallet system that would let consumers pay for items online with just a single click.

Tapping into the growing mobile payments technology known as NFC (near-field communications), Visa's offering could also let consumers wirelessly pay for items at retail outlets through a mobile device equipped with the digital wallet technology.

The company is promising a number of benefits through its digital wallet. Consumers could order items online in one click using a single e-mail address or ID and password instead of having to plug in their mailing addresses and … Read more

Intuit wants to give its customers a glimpse of the future of mobile payments through an adaptation of its GoPayment service that eliminates the need for credit cards.

Tapping into the growing field of NFC (near-field communication) technology, Intuit's reimagined GoPayment service would let consumers wirelessly pay for items on the go through just a touch of an NFC-enabled cell phone.

With the necessary NFC hardware and credit card information stored on a mobile phone, consumers could leave their money and credit cards at home and use their phones to buy items and services at stores, restaurants, and other … Read more

Smartphone buyers who've been waiting for the 4G version of the Nexus S can now pick up the new model.

Making its actual debut yesterday, the Samsung Nexus S 4G is available directly from Sprint for $199 with a two-year contract or for $549 without a contract. But Best Buy is offering an even better buy, selling the phone for $150 with the two-year committment.

The new Android phone builds upon the same specs found in the Nexus S offered by T-Mobile but with the faster speed kicked in by Sprint's WiMax network. However, that 4G and other cool new features will take a bite out of your wallet.

Buyers will have to sign up for Sprint's Everything Data plan, which starts at $69 per month. It's an extra $10 a month for the Premium Data Plan add-on. And if you want the mobile hot-spot feature that lets you connect up to six wireless devices, you'll have to throw in another $29 per month.… Read more

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile USA are scaling back plans for a mobile payment system that will allow people to buy things with their cell phones, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal today.

In November the companies announced that they had formed an alliance with credit card company Discover to build their own mobile payment network. The joint venture was known as Isis. The plan called for the carriers to set up their own payment and transaction network that would charge fees based on transactions. The business model would have put the wireless operators in … Read more

We've been talking about mobile payments gaining U.S. traction for years, but it's been during only the past few weeks that there's been a stampede of activity signaling that the fight for dominion over mobile payments is about to begin.

What makes the topic such a tangle is the fact that the term "mobile payments" can mean anything from NFC (near-field communication) technology at the cash register or bus stop to paying for items with a smartphone app.

2011 could go down as the year of NFC.

NFC, for the uninitiated, is short for near-field communication, a chip technology that, when placed in two different devices, lets small amounts of data be sent over very short distances between them. This can include credit card information, train ticket info, a coupon bar code, and more.

Though there are already credit cards with NFC chips inside, this year those chips are going to make the leap to mobile phones in significant numbers. A burgeoning industry is growing up around mobile payments using NFC technology--one that has the potential to be … Read more