Between 2012 and 2017 the installed base of NFC-enabled handsets will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 65% to reach 2.1bn units, according to new research from Berg Insight. "The penetration rate for NFC across all handset segments will similarly increase to approximately 32% by 2017." NFC mobile wallet services have now been commercially deployed in 13 countries, up from six at the end of 2011, according to a new study by Berg Insight . Most are still available to only a very...

Swedish mobile payment specialist Seamless has partnered with Turkey's Garanti Bank to launch its Seqr NFC and QR payments platform in Romania — and plans to launch the service in the UK later this year. Starting as a QR code based payment service in late 2011, Seqr was expanded to include support for NFC tag-based payments in April this year and will be offering both options when the service is launched in a few weeks time. Peter Fredell, CEO of Seamless, told NFC World: "Since...

Attendees at the Indaba 2013 travel show in South Africa used Poken's NFC social networking platform more than 60,000 times a day to digitally exchange documents and share business cards, the NFC connectivity specialist reports. The 11,458 Indaba attendees were able to use either Sony Xperia phones or Poken's NFC USB sticks and tags to collect information and share their contact details through the event's Indaba Connect system. Overall, 14,528 documents were collected and 240,000...

On the night of the 5/6th June a fact of fraud with the cards of PJSC “Ukrsotsbank”, UniCredit BankTM was fixed. The precedent happened after the Bank’s Security Service found a fact of using scanning device installed at one of ATMs of the network. Thanks to the Bank’s usage of an up-to-date system of on-line monitoring, the risk that fraudsters would use the stolen information was minimal. However, a number of card holders suffered. The Bank has developed and...

Google Inc is finalizing a deal to acquire online mapping company Waze for $1.3 billion, according to a source familiar with the matter.   The deal is expected to be announced this week, though it was unlikely to occur on Monday, another source told Reuters. "Negotiations are nearly final. There are a couple of details being worked out," the second source said. The source described the remaining details as "logistics" rather than significant sticking points. Google and Waze...

Apple just announced iOS 7, the new operating system for iPhones and iPads that will be available as a free download later this year.  It's a massive overhaul of the iOS you're probably used to –– a top-to-bottom redesign. As previous reports have stated, the new iOS adopts a "flat" design with a bright color scheme. That means design elements on the iPhone no longer mimic real-world objects. All of the standard apps that come with the iPhone like Mail, Phone,...

The number of private entrepreneurs who use Privatbank's  application iPay,  that  allows   to accept credit card payment  via  smartphones, tablets and computers ,  exceeded  150 000 people. According to the official press release of the bank , at present it was registered   over   100,000 downloads  of this  app for Android, 30,000 for iOS, and  20,000 for PC Windows / Linux. Thus , according to...

It was said by the deputy head of the cybercrime fighting Division of the Interior Ministry of Ukraine Leonid Timchenko at the international conference "Payment Forum", organized by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). According to him, only in Q1 of this year it was detected 37 such devices. As the representative of the Interior Ministry said, detection statistics of skimming devices shows the growth of such crimes in Ukraine.   The first such device was detected in Ukraine in...