The first results of the NFC payments trial taking place in Sitges, Spain show that 60% of the participants have so far used their phone to make a payment, Benjamí Puigdevall, CEO of e-La Caixa, has told Spanish financial publication CincoDias.

The Mobile Shopping Sitges 2010 trial began on 27 May. It is led by mobile network operator Movistar, part of the Telefónica group, La Caixa and Visa and includes the participation of Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Samsung, Ingenico and the Sitges city council. 1,500 customers of both Telefónica and banking group La Caixa are taking part in the trial along with 500 of the town's merchants.

By late July, La Caixa expects 80% of consumers to have used their NFC phones, Puigdevall told CincoDias. To date, NFC payments have been made at 60% of the participating merchants and the average merchant has seen three NFC transactions at an average transaction value of €30.

75% of transactions have taken place during the working week with Saturdays seeing only 19% of transactions, says Puigdevall. 52% have taken place in supermarkets and 14% in restaurants with smaller transaction volumes taking place in a variety of other outlets such as textile shops, perfume retailers, shoe stores, tobacco shops and florists.

50% of the transactions have been conducted by consumers aged between 26 and 45 with a further 30% being conducted by those aged between 46 and 55.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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• Telefonica announces NFC trial in Sitges, Spain
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SITGES: 1,500 participants can use Samsung NFC handsets at 500 merchants in the Spanish resort

The pre-commercial NFC trial in the Spanish resort of Sitges, announced in February, has gone live.

The 'Mobile Shopping Sitges 2010' pilot is being led by mobile network operator Movistar, part of the Telefónica group, La Caixa and Visa and includes the participation of Gemalto, Giesecke & Devrient, Samsung, Ingenico and the Sitges city council.

1,500 customers of both Movistar and La Caixa have been chosen to participate in the pilot and can use their Samsung S5230 NFC phones to make payments using their La Caixa credit or debit card accounts at 500 merchants in the town.

Transactions valued at up to €20 can be made without a PIN and larger transactions can be carried out provided the customer enters their PIN on the keypad of the merchant's POS terminal to confirm the purchase.

Each of the pilot's participants are being given training on how to use their phones and a website providing comprehensive information on the new service and how it works has been set up by Telefónica at www.mobileshopping.es.

"Telefónica will expand the offer to use its technology to other banks, and expects that La Caixa will partner with other platforms in addition to Visa," Kim Faura, head of Telefonica's Catalonia region, has told Europa Press.

The pilot is scheduled to last for six months. Participants will not be required to return their NFC phones at the end of the pilot, however, as there are plans to both continue the service in Sitges and to expand it to the city of Barcelona, just 35km up the coast from the resort.

The start of the Sitges pilot is the second of a pair of significant moves towards the adoption of NFC by Telefónica to take place in the last seven days. Earlier this week, we reported that the company's first commercial NFC service has gone live in the Czech city of Pilsen and that Telefónica's business strategy for NFC deployments is now in place. An NFC bus ticketing trial is also due to go live in the near future in Lima, Peru.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

Related news:

• La Caixa reports first results from Sitges NFC trial
• Telefónica O2 launches its first commercial NFC service — and sets out strategy for future deployments
• Telefonica announces NFC trial in Sitges, Spain
• Telefónica and Sermepa launch NFC pilot in Spain
• NFC trial begins at Mobile World Congress

Four hundred Samsung Star NFC handsets are being distributed to selected Mobile World Congress attendees for use at the event, which opens in Barcelona today.

Participants can use their NFC phones to pay for food and drink up to a value of €75 at over 30 merchant locations around the Congress.

GSMA, Telefonica, Visa and Samsung, with Giesecke & Devrient, Ingenico, ITN International and La Caixa have teamed up to deliver the service at the event.

The NFC handsets contain Telefonica SIM cards from O2 pre-loaded with €60 airtime credit as well as a La Caixa Visa Mobile Payment Application.

Participants in the trial will be able to purchase food and drink, simply by holding their Samsung NFC mobile phone against the contactless terminal at the participating merchants to pay for purchases under €10. Purchases above €10 require a passcode which the participant keys into the handset before presenting it to the terminal. The transactions are authorised online, with funds deducted from a La Caixa Visa account.

"It is a fantastic achievement to bring a full payment trial to Mobile World Congress and a testament to the hard work of the partners that this cross-industry collaboration has worked so well," says Michael O'Hara, chief marketing officer at the GSMA. "Mobile operators have been requesting SIM-based NFC handsets for some time now and it's great to see such progress in this area. Now that the handsets are coming, we can expect to see a number of commercial launches of mobile SIM-based NFC services this year."

"The partners have worked successfully to bring the NFC experience to Mobile World Congress with the intention of raising awareness of this technology in anticipation of the commercial launch of these SIM based handsets in the very near future," says the official announcement. "As more of the SIM based handsets become commercially available it will help trigger global adoption and rollout of mobile NFC. Mobile NFC services will change the way people transact with their phones, everything from payments, travelling and ticketing will be transformed to ensure ease and convenience in the lifestyles of consumers around the world."

The partners' roles in the project included:

• GSMA acted as the project lead, leveraging its Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative which, supported by over 50 mobile operators, has been working to make SIM-based NFC payment services a reality.
• Samsung Electronics provided the NFC-enabled Samsung Star handsets and offered technical support to ensure the stability of the trial.
• Telefonica provided the user interface enabling display and management of the core payment application on the handset, the O2 Wallet.
• Visa provided the Visa Mobile Payment Application, a made-for-mobile contactless payment application, to La Caixa and Telefonica for use within the O2 SIM cards with €60 preloaded airtime credit. Visa coordinated activities with La Caixa, Telefonica, Ingenico and G&D to ensure that the accounts, O2 Wallet, terminals and SIM cards were Visa-compliant and mobile contactless ready.
• La Caixa have issued accounts and have credited them with €75; La Caixa is also serving as the acquiring bank for the participating merchants.
• Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) manufactured the NFC-enabled SIM cards and personalised them with a La Caixa Visa Mobile Payment Application, allowing the Samsung NFC mobile phone to make EMV mobile payments by connecting to the SIM card through the standardised Single Wire Protocol (SWP).
• Ingenico provided the participating merchants around the FIRA exhibition hall with unique colour screen contactless EFT930G wireless payment terminals, enabling participants to pay for food and drink by simply presenting their mobile phone at the terminal.
• ITN International, a mobile data management company for the event marketing industry, was a founding member of the NFC experience at Mobile World Congress.

Last week, Telefonica announced it is to run an NFC trial in the Spanish resort of Sitges, 40km from Barcelona, from May this year. The trial will be run in conjunction with Visa and La Caixa. The 1,500 participants will be able to use their Samsung phones at 500 shops in Sitges and the project could expand later to Barcelona and beyond.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

Related news:

• La Caixa reports first results from Sitges NFC trial
• GSMA video shows NFC in action at the Mobile World Congress
• Telefonica announces NFC trial in Sitges, Spain
• Telefónica Movistar, La Caixa and Visa begin pre-commercial NFC pilot in Spanish resort of Sitges
• T-Mobile begins internal NFC payments and access control trial in Czech Republic

SIMPLICITY: Ingenico's research found consumers are keen to embrace mobile payments and that they value convenience over security

Convenience, rather than security, is set to drive widespread adoption of new payment methods, an independent survey of 1,000 British consumers has found.

The research, commissioned by terminal supplier Ingenico, found that shoppers already like the idea of using their mobile phone to make payments and supports the idea that contactless transactions could prove a viable alternative to cash in the UK.

Respondents were questioned about contactless prepaid cards, contactless debit or credit cards and mobile handset payments. Overall, 41% of respondents said they would consider using or would definitely use their phone for payments and the top three benefits were cited as convenience, a reduction in queuing times and a preference to carry less cash and cards around. Only 12% of respondents saw the improved security of mobile payment as a benefit — and their answers included some surprising findings:

Attitudes to cash — On average, survey respondents had £29.30 in their wallet/purse on any typical day and consumer tolerance in relation to cash loss is high, with the respondents saying they would need to lose and average £71.30 cash before reporting it to the police.

"This points to a surprising under-valuation of significant amounts of money," say the researchers, "and illustrates that consumers interpret and relate to traditional cash, in terms of its disposal/loss, very differently to other payment mechanisms. High levels of personal control and ownership of risk related to cash appear to be an accepted trade-off. Thus cards, being a bank-oriented device, result in consumers perception of risk sitting with the bank. Interestingly this picture could change in the future once mobile phone based payments are more widely adopted as mobile phones are seen very much as personal property."

Simplicity and convenience are key — When it comes to payment, consumer preference for simplicity and convenience are paramount considerations. One-third (33%) of shoppers would rather use cards than dig out change from their pocket, while 26% of all respondents viewed a single card to replace their existing cards as a desirable aspiration.

FIGURE 1: Approach to payment methods. Source: Ingenico Paypolls Survey 2009. Click to enlarge

Security is not a top priority — Payment security is not a top priority for consumers using mobile technologies. Instead, shoppers viewed convenience as the primary benefit (62%) with only 8% citing increased security as an advantage. "Ease-of-use outweighs the consideration of risk issues when convenience is a measurable gain," say the researchers.

Consumers are willing to make high value mobile transactions — Although the current limit for contactless card payments in the UK is set at £10, respondents said they would be willing to use a mobile phone to make purchases valued on average at £30.10. And, for those who indicated they have or would use mobile payments, it was the most popular option for transactions valued at between £10 and £49.

FIGURE 2: Benefits of using mobile handset technology. Source: Ingenico Paypolls Survey 2009. Click to enlarge

"Confusion related to usage — for example, how transactions are executed (appearing on mobile provider bill or bank statement) and transaction charges — associated with mobile phone usage, eg SMS charges — may underpin the lower shopper preference for using mobile handsets to undertake sub-£10.00 purchases," say the researchers.

"While shoppers view engagement with any payment technology as a potential entry point into wider personal financial data, respondents confirm that the perceived benefits of ease-of-use, timeliness, and convenience will outweigh such security considerations when undertaking payment transactions," the researchers conclude.

FIGURE 3: Average spend by those who have/would use mobile phone payment technology. Source: Ingenico Paypolls Survey 2009. Click to enlarge

"It is clear however that consumers' desire for speed and convenience at the point of sale is likely to drive contactless card and phone payment technologies," they say. "While strong word of mouth seems likely to ease the introduction of these technologies due to the benefits, this may be mitigated somewhat by the currently low awareness levels. Further education of consumers regarding these technologies may therefore be necessary to accelerate adoption."

"Adoption of contactless and mobile payments in the UK is going to be fascinating to watch, as it is being consumer-driven," says Gregor Rankin, marketing manager for northern Europe at Ingenico." British shoppers want speed and convenience at the till and they see how these new payment methods meet their needs. Retailers can also expect to benefit, as increased footfall is one of the recognised advantages of implementing contactless."

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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MOUNTAIN EXCITEMENT: Skiers in the Falcade region will be given NFC-enabled phones for the Stolpan field trial

Visitors to selected hotels in the ski resorts around the Italian city of Falcade this winter will be able to use NFC phones in a wide range of application areas around their resort.

The trial will be the first time that the NFC solutions being developed by the Stolpan consortium will be tested in the field. Stolpan, the Store Logistics and Payment with NFC project, is a pan-European consortium aiming to define open commercial and technical frameworks for NFC-enabled services.

The applications being tested in this trial use a variety of different devices and connection technologies including smart cards, SMS and barcodes as well as NFC phones and terminals from different suppliers. Applications include:

• The delivery of up-to-date ski and weather reports to phones when devices are waved past NFC-enabled active posters.
• The integration of NFC with SMS and barcode-based infrastructures in bars, restaurants and shops to offer customer loyalty schemes. For example a coupon picked up from a smart poster offering discounts at a local restaurant might be redeemed through the NFC phone using a SMS or barcode system later that evening.

"Widespread adoption of NFC applications requires simplicity for users," explained Florent Frederix, head of the RFID office within the European Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate. "Being able to integrate this exciting technology with existing contactless, Mifare and bar code environments is crucial to achieve this."

"This first open interoperability trial will be a key milestone in positioning Europe as a globally competitive player in the NFC area which will become an important technology for the emerging Internet of Things," he added.

"The trial requires us to bring together different technologies and partners to support our common goal," commented Francesco Prato, executive vice president of Ennova Research, the Stolpan member firm that is managing the trial and has developed the service platform being used. "We expect the service and platform deployed in the Veneto region will be ready for widespread commercial deployment in 2010, coinciding with the integration of NFC into significant numbers of mobile phones."

The trial, organized by Stolpan, is supported by the University of Rome's Cattid laboratory, the Regione del Veneto local government and Hungarian NFC specialists AFF. Different types of NFC-enabled phones, contactless point-of-sale terminals from Ingenico and both NFC and Mifare technology from NXP are being used in the trial. The security systems used in the trial have been developed by Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) in Austria.

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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The NFC Forum had its 'traditional' NFC Zone at Cartes & Identification 2008, the main smart card industry trade show of the year, with demonstrations available from members including Legic, Nexperts, Toppan Forms, Stolpan and others, and also held a press briefing to announce its new chairman, Sony FeliCa's Koichi Tagawa.

But, this year, NFC also had a presence in the exhibition halls that went way beyond the confines of the NFC Zone itself. In particular, contactless stickers were on display on several stands, most of the established card industry players were involved with NFC in one form or another and it became very clear that the whole Trusted Service Manager marketplace is going to become highly competitive indeed.

NFC Forum stalwarts NXP and Sony FeliCa both had substantial stands at Cartes, with Sony FeliCa making a significant impact at the show, along with its new North American manufacturer Versatile Card Technology (VCT). NXP had a particularly busy time, announcing a significant extension of its Mifare licensing deal with Renesas and providing details of the new Mifare4Mobile initiative.

Amongst the specialist contactless and NFC suppliers, Vivotech had a flurry of announcements to make. In the last few weeks, the company has supplied its NFC provisioning software to Visa for its new NFC payments trial in Guatemala, added Atari and Nintendo veteran Don Kingsborough to its board of directors and launched the ViVOpay Kiosk II, a flexible NFC-compatible contactless payment reader designed for use in kiosks, turnstiles, bus validators and other ticketing applications. Vivotech was also a finalist in the loyalty category at the Cartes show's Sesames awards with its NFC-based one-to-one marketing, location-based promotion and smart poster management system.

Card industry players

Most of the major card industry players now have an NFC offering, whether it's an NFC-enabled SIM, reader or service management solution. Oberthur launched a software development kit dubbed 'NFC in a Box' whilst Giesecke & Devrient picked up a Sesames award for its ProxSIM, the NFC-enabled SIM used in Deutsche Bahn's NFC trials.

Sagem Orga, meanwhile, announced a development deal with French start-up Neowave that will see the production of a USB 'smart object' with a contactless interface that also contains a SIM. Known as SIMply U and based on Neowave's Weneo NFC technology, the idea is that the device can act as a bridge between a subscriber's mobile phone and their PC, enabling a mobile operator to offer new, secure internet-based services.

Beyond this, says Sagem Orga, the technology partnership will also explore new use cases for such devices in areas such as transportation, payment, location-based services and entertainment.

SCM Microsystems also has an 'NFC dongle', the SCL3710, which is designed to provide a link between NFC-enabled mobile devices and computer or web applications. The company has also recently released the @MAXX Prime, also aimed at creating a bridge between a customer's mobile phone and his PC.

Gemalto demonstrated NFC applications and a new prototype handset from LG. The KU380-NFC, currently available for demonstration purposes only, uses STMicroelectronics' ST21NFCA system-on-chip and features both PayPass contactless payment capabilities via a Gemalto (U)SIM card and built-in contactless reader functions.

STMicroelectronics also has a new NFC chip, the ST33F1M, the first in a new ST33 family targeting the high-end SIM market and based on the SC300 highly secure version of the ARM Cortex-M3 32-bit core. The new chip features 1.2Mbytes of embedded Flash memory with 30Kbytes of RAM and an SWP (single wire protocol) interface for NFC.

Elsewhere amongst the chip manufacturers, Infineon had a prototype of a new Secure Element on show, alongside its SLE 88 family for Mobile NFC — smart card microcontrollers with SWP (Single Wire Protocol) and Mifare interfaces — as well as its my-d NFC chip for Type 2 NFC tags.

Samsung also has a new NFC chip on the horizon, with a launch date set for the first quarter of 2009, and brought Korean IT specialists SK C&C along to Cartes to demonstrate the development work the company has been doing with the µSIMneo NFC-enabled USIM.

Visa and MasterCard also had large stands, predominantly promoting their respective contactless PayWave and PayPass solutions, but both also had mobile payments experts on hand to discuss NFC as well.

And, on the payment terminals front, the 'big three' of Verifone, Hypercom and Ingenico all now offer NFC-compatible contactless card readers.

The product evaluators, consultants and testers have also moved firmly into the NFC space with Collis, Comprion and Soliatis all offering NFC testing and evaluation solutions at the show. FIME, meanwhile, announced that it has started working in partnership with Inside Contactless in a bid to identify and resolve potential conflicts in the interoperability of NFC devices and to develop a comprehensive process, support and service portfolio for testing and certifying NFC mobile handsets.

Stickers

Contactless stickers seemed to be everywhere with both established supplier On Track Innovations and Inside Contactless demonstrating products. Whilst, for most, the idea of a contactless sticker attached to the back of a mobile phone is a very long way from being true NFC, their potential as a way to acclimatise consumers to the idea of using their phones to make a payment and to leapfrog the need to have an installed base of NFC-enabled handsets before a payments system can be introduced is clear.

Inside's new contactless stickers were being demonstrated by both Inside Contactless and US card manufacturer CPI Card Group, which has signed a manufacturing agreement with Inside that will see it produce the new payment stickers in the US. CPI says it expects to ship several million stickers over the next year and is in talks with ten top US financial institutions. And, in a separate agreement, HID Global signed up with Inside to manufacture MicroPass contactless prelaminates in the US (which CPI will then turn into finished stickers).

Twinlinx, meanwhile, was generating a lot of excitement with its My-Max prototype, a sticker that combines a Bluetooth receiver, NFC transmitter and a chip which adds a layer of encryption. Developed in partnership with Mobile Distillery, My-Max is designed to let any Bluetooth-enabled handset act as a fully-featured NFC device. To create the solution, Mobile Distillery worked with Twinlinx to create a Java ME layer which can access Twinlinx's Bluetooth NFC module, called My-Max. This module, which takes the form of a small sticker that sits on the back of the handset, combines a Bluetooth receiver and NFC transmitter, as well as a chip which adds a layer of encryption, making sure any data sent using the module is secure.

And Chinese smart card manufacturer Watchdata caused a lot of interest with its SIMpass 'Single Card Near Field Communication (SC-NFC)' solution. Already extensively field tested in China and Thailand, SIMpass comes in two versions. In the first it is built into a handset as a secure element and in the second it is retro-fitted to existing handsets (the company says it is compatible with 80% of handsets). Here, the antenna is connected to the SIMpass module and the SIMpass module itself is inserted as normal into the SIM slot on the phone. Attached to the SIM, though, is the antenna and the user simply removes the back cover of the phone and then places the antenna between the battery and the back cover where it can be kept securely.

Trusted service managers

There was lots of activity in the Trusted Service Manager (TSM) space, an area that seems to get more complex by the week. Existing suppliers Venyon and Gemalto were there, of course, along with Bell ID, which has since announced it is working with British mobile banking services provider Monitise to establish a shared trusted service manager approach for NFC systems.

ABnote was also talking trusted service managers at the show, after announcing its entry into the TSM space with the creation of a new partnership with Datacard called Redwave Solutions. The new company plans to create a global trusted service manager and will offer NFC application and support services via a network of value added resellers and secure processing centers.

Also being demonstrated on the ABnote stand was the new remote application management solution for NFC that ABnote subsidiary Proxama has developed in conjunction with Aconite. The new solution allows a customer to do everything from cancelling the payment application because their phone has been lost or stolen to adding a ticketing application or an access control facility for a new job, all over-the-air.

• Did we miss your company? If you were demonstrating NFC at Cartes but we missed you out, please let us know! You can leave a comment below or email news@nearfieldworld.com and we'll add you in...

This article was first published at www.NearFieldCommunicationsWorld.com.

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• Toro’s user management system in running for a Sesame award
• Discover, MasterCard certify new mobile contactless stickers from Inside and CPI
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