Standardisation will drive future NFC

Gartner claims that near-field communication (NFC) technologies currently used in the contactless payment market are only "interim solutions" to educate consumers on the benefits of the technology, reports ZDNet.

Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner, notes that NFC technologies will help educate the market about what contactless payment can do for them and prepare consumers for "NFC-standard compliant services when they are ready for commercial deployment”.

Shen says: "It will help if a single market can agree on a single standard and all parties execute accordingly. Japan is one such example and we are seeing similar efforts being made in Singapore and France, which is good news for the industry."

AT&T plans to offer a mobile payment service aimed at small businesses, says Bnet.

The company faces the reality that both Apple and Google are developing approaches to mobile business that largely cut out the carriers that used to control it.

AT&T has revealed it will work with Apriva, a wireless payment company which enables smartphones to turn into point-of-sale devices that accept credit and debit card transactions.

Translink plans to give away 400 000 Go Cards, armed with $10 credit, in an attempt to encourage more people to trial the electronic payment scheme, states Brisbane Times.

However, less than half were given away during the two-week period and the Australian government has agreed to extend the giveaway period to 25 July.

More than 60% of public transport trips in Australia now use a Go Card. There were 23.6 million Go Card trips between January and March 2010, more than double the trips for the same quarter last year.