Tag: nfc technology news

Mobile payments receive considerable boost from Australian telcos

| January 2, 2013

Mobile Payments AustraliaThis year will make it much easier for consumers in Australia to make purchases using smartphones.

Telcos in Australia are giving a significant kick to their intentions to bring mobile payments to consumers throughout the country so that they will be able to use their smartphones or tablets to pay for products or services at a store’s checkout counter.

This could be the first step toward making credit cards obsolete within the country.

Although mobile payments are a move that has been in the works for several years and very little action has actually been seen until very recently. Even the most recent steps have not been enormous, and the term “contactless payments” remains unknown to the majority of consumers, even among those whose devices are capable of the transactions.

Though the contactless mobile payments concept has great potential, it has been failing to gain traction.

The idea behind mobile payments is quite simple. It involves using a smartphone or tablet that is either waved over an enabled reader at a point of sale in a store, or tapped against it. This automatically transfers the funds necessary for making the purchase from the user’s credit card or bank account, into the account of the store.

The primary barrier faced by this type of mobile payments is the fact that only a small percentage of smartphones are actually enabled with the necessary NFC technology (near field communication) that allow these transactions to occur. This was held back even further by the release of the iPhone 5 by Apple, which shocked the mobile world when those chips were notably absent.

Vodafone and Telstra believe that this year will mark a difference in this trend. They believe that with many more NFC technology enabled devices entering the marketplace, it will represent a brand new opportunity for mobile payments to take off.

According to Dr. Hugh Bradlow, the chief technology officer at Telstra, “It’s been promised for a long time, but by next year many devices on the market will incorporate near field communication.” He went on to explain that in the mobile payments marketplace, “NFC has been a slow burn, but it will likely become entrenched next year and we plan to be a big part of that.”

NFC technology may be the car key of the (near) future

| December 29, 2012

nfc technology car keysKorean vehicle manufacturer, Hyundai, will soon replace car keys with smartphones.

Hyundai has just made a new high tech announcement in which it revealed its latest NFC technology smartphone system that will use a driver’s mobile phone to replace traditional car keys.

The auto manufacturer predicts that this option will become available on some 2015 models.

This means that within two years’ time, drivers may be able to use NFC technology enabled smartphones to lock and unlock their cars, as well as to turn them on. This cutting edge technology uses the latest in smartphone features in a brand new way for added convenience and comfort.

Unlocking the vehicle will be as simple as waving the NFC technology enabled smartphone over the window.

The window of the vehicles will be equipped with an electronic tag that reads NFC technology communications. This way, a simple wave of the device is all that is needed to lock or unlock the doors. Hyundai is calling this its Connectivity Concept.

A statement from the chief operating officer at Hyundai Motor Europe, Allan Rushforth, said that the Connectivity Concept highlights the auto manufacturer’s philosophy for using the latest technologies that are accessible to a broad spectrum of customers. Rushforth explained that “With this technology, Hyundai is able to harness the all-in-one functionality of existing smartphone technology and integrating it into everyday driving in a seamless fashion.”

The NFC technology features were demonstrated by the company in Germany, where it gave a preview using the concept version of its small popular car, the i30. Models using these features should become available as early as 2015. Also in those vehicles will be an expanded use of the smartphone chips, which will allow the devices to rest into a central console featuring a 7 inch display.

That way the NFC technology will be able to provide the information system of the vehicle with a number of in-car preferences, such as synched music, radio station choices, navigation route data from the contact list, and seat and mirror settings, all while charging the device. Each driver profile will be saved separately.