Tag: near field communication

Mobile payments become a major focus for BlackBerry

| June 18, 2014

As the company battles to survive and rebuild its relevance, transactions are the new strategy.

As BlackBerry desperately attempts to remain afloat and recreate itself into a position of relevance in the technology world, this Canadian handset maker is now placing a considerable focus on mobile payments as a new major element of its overall strategy.

While the market is currently clearly dominated by Android and iOS devices, BlackBerry isn’t giving up.

The company has now announced its intentions to become considerably more aggressive in the highly competitive and rapidly moving mobile payments environment. It has also confirmed a new three year agreement in which it has now entered with EnStream LP, which is a smartphone transactions joint venture that is owned by Bell, Rogers, and TELUS, the largest wireless carriers in Canada.

The agreement is to provide a secure mobile payments transaction services platform for Canadian banks and consumers.

This agreement will give EnStream the ability to leverage the infrastructure at BlackBerry in order to be able to give a range of mobile operators and financial institutions the capability to provision sensitive credit and debit card data into any NFC technology enabled smartphone.Mobile Payments - NFC Technlogy

BlackBerry released a statement that said that “Today the mobile payments space is primed for growth.” It used data that had been produced by Gartner in order to back this up, showing that it has been predicted that the total value of the transactions that will be completed through the use of smartphone technology will rise from where it had been in 2012, at $35 billion, to reach $173 billion by the close of 2017. That represents a tremendous 31 percent compound annual growth rate.

This forecast also includes the purchase of tickets and merchandise, as well as of bill payments. That said, it does not include airtime top-ups or funds that are sent from person to person.

BlackBerry’s statement went on to further explain its position that “Supporting mobile payments reinforces BlackBerry’s ability to provide unique services that help enterprise customers deploy secure mobile solutions that help promote productivity among their workforce and drive new revenue streams.”

NFC technology will be used in the Wii U Super Smash Bros.

| June 2, 2014

It has now been revealed that near field communication will be used for this game through the Nintendo console.

A managing director of Nintendo France, Stephan Bole, has now revealed that the Super Smash Bros. game version that is designed for the company’s Wii U console will be using NFC technology.

It is believed that this will help to show what the console’s near field communication tech has to offer.

Bole explained that “E3 will be an opportunity to show the use of NFC technology on Nintendo consoles. NFC will be used in the Wii U version of Super Smash Bros.” It is the hope that this will better illustrate the type of capabilities that this tech has to offer users of the console, who may never have heard of it or who might not understand exactly what it has to offer them.

The NFC technology in this game allows for a more interactive game experience among players.

The idea behind near field communication tech is that it gives two devices that are close to one another (or touching) the ability to wirelessly exchange data. It is the foundation of the Skylanders franchise from Activision and of the Disney Infinity franchise.

NFC Technology - NintendoEarlier in May, Nintendo announced that it would be taking what looked to be its first steps into this particular marketplace. This was through its announcement of the Nintendo Figurine Platform (NFP). That platform was designed to support training as well as in upgrading the versions of in-game figures of a range of different characters in Nintendo games. It will support games on the Nintendo 3DS, as well as the Wii U.

At that time, the company also stated that it intended to launch the first titles that were compatible with the NFP, over its Wii U and that they would become available before the end of 2014. It also plans to have the 3DS games ready for sale at some point in 2015.

Although the company has announced that the NFC technology would be used for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, it has yet to actually announce the figures that would be working with the game. That said, there is still time before the release of that game – which is expected out this winter – and the tech may be used entirely differently by then.