The Samsung Wallet provides time and location-based push notifications to customer when they are able to use the passes stored in their wallet. It comes with real-time updates for membership points and boarding pass changes. Users can open their passes to display bar codes that can be scanned at payment terminals. Third-party developers will be able to integrate with Wallet to easily let users add passes and tickets to the app. Users can expect the number of partners for the app including Walgreens, Belly, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com, and Lufthansa. For sure the list will get longer with forthcoming March 14th launch of the Galaxy S IV

“The difference with in the new NFC integration is that banks and others launching mobile payment services will, via a set of APIs, use Visa’s new Mobile Provisioning Service to securely download payment account information to NFC-enabled Samsung devices. On top of that, Samsung will preload Visa’s payWave applet on its NFC-equipped mobile devices. In short, it will mean a less frictionless, but still secure, way of using your (Samsung) handset.” Gajda, Visa’s global head of mobile product mentioned.

Thist statement sound like, Visa is providing a kind of super TSM for banks, excluding the MNOs from the ecosystem. On the other handset Samsung offers APIs for Post Issuing Personalization (PIP) that is usually integrated into the Wallet of the MNOs or Banks.

In case this plan flys, it is definitlty a big leap head to bring mobile payment based on NFC into today’s handset.

All debitcards, which are issued in Austria this year, will include this paypass feature. Paypass allows the customers to make low value transaction (below 25 EUR) without a PIN. Customers of all banks in Austria will receive cards with NFC. Besides Paypass the cards also feature the contactless version of Quick. In case a customer does not want to have the contactless feature he either gets as non-NFC card or the NFC feature of the card is disabled at the POS. Although the cards are slightly more expensive to produce, the banks will not raise the fees for the cards issued.

Also the terminal side is changing at the moment. Austria’s 2nd largest Retailer Spar changed its acquirer to Card Complete and is rolling out contactless Terminals from Ingenico (although the NFC feature is not yet active on the terminals). Austria’s largest acquirer PayLife announced to rollout its contactless payment terminals for Visa Paywave and Mastercard Paypass in Q2/2012.

A word on security: for payments below 25 EURs no pin is required. In case a card is lost, the thief can make 5 contactless transactions up to 25 EURs without requiring a PIN. After the 5th transaction a contactful transaction with PIN is required. Of course, the banks will take over the risk for this amount (125 EUR). Thus there is no implication of the customer.

Also there is no money stored on a debit card. And, although the information on the chip is not encrypted, the transaction itself is fully secured thru a cryptogram using a key with is unique for each card. So faking a transaction is not possible for the current point of view.

Spar currently makes in Austria revenue of approx. 5 billion EURs in 2.828 Shops with almost 73.000 employees. Assuming that in each store there are at least 4 lanes, Spar will require about 10.000 Terminals which will be rollout in the next weeks. Spar’s biggest competitor REWE with its brands Merkur, Penny, Bipa and Billa is currently using the NFC payment system from Paybox/A1.

Although the terminals feature NFC, the contactless features for paywave and paypass are not yet enabled. Thus the assumption is, that Spar is first rolling out the terminals and testing the integration and afterwards provide a new software with the new features.

Austria’s largest acquirer Paylife currently is not yet offering NFC enabled payment Terminals. According to a press release they will be available in Q2/2013 — so still some time to go. Paylife was split into two companys in June 2012. The Paylife Bank acting as acquirer & credit card issuers and PSA (payment Services Austria) for ATMs and debit cards. This split up of the company might be one issue for the delay of NFC enabled terminals in their portfolio. PSA will start issuing contactless debit cards with MasterCard Paypass in 2013.

Google’s big advantage in the NFC ecosystem is, that they have an embedded secure element in each NFC enabled mobile devices. Now, as ISIS starts in the US this solution is getting a competitor. The MNOs want to see the UICC as the (only) secure element and therefore does Google not allow (thru legal agreements) installing a wallet in the secure element. This also might be also the case for Europe, where the MNOs have a strong customer relation ship. As long as no MNO wants Google on its device, Google will not be present. So far, MNOs in Europe are seeking their own solutions with their own wallets. This reduces the impact of Google Wallet massively, as the MNO projects are long lasting a yet far away from market implementation.

So what is Google doing? The start collecting different types of payment cards from the customers such as debit and credit cards, which can be used for card-not-present transactions. Similar to PayPal Google then is able to use this payment instruments for POS payment, online payment or payment at Google Checkout. The idea of virtualizing the card in an NFC phone started in August, when Google allowed storing different existing cards in their wallet for POS payment. Google didn’t issue one virtual card, for each physical one. There was only one card in the secure element and the routing from which account/card the money was taking as in the backend system of the issuer: Bancorp Bank. So Google’s Wallet in this case is just a user interface that allows the customer to “redirect” the payment flow to the correct card.

When issuing a physical Google Wallet card, the idea stays the same. One the card the is only one payment application (I’m quite sure, it is a MasterCard PayPass, issued by Bancorp. Bank). It is not a post-paid or prepaid card, it is a virtual card that redirects the payment flow to an account the customers selects thru its Google Wallet. This implementation allows even “non”-NFC or “non”-Google Phone users to use the Google Wallet. They will receive a card and they only thing they need is an application, which allows them to select to “real” card behind this virtual card. This all is done in the backend, why it is often referred to as could payment. The application could run on any phone – even iPhone.

PayPal already took a similar approach with the PayPal debit card, but in this case only the amount store could be retried at an ATM. existing payment instruments were not touched. Google does not store/hold money, it simply only acts as a router and therefore requires less infrastructure and investement (and no Bank licence).

Typically, on mobile websites, you need to key in 17-20 fields of information on a small screen while having to click and scroll through multiple pages to provide shipping and billing information. It’s no wonder up to 97% of mobile shoppers abandon their mobile shopping carts. Google Wallet makes it easy and secure for you. Simply click the Buy with Google Wallet button, log into Google Wallet and click to complete your order. That’s it — you’re done in 3 steps.

With Google Wallet, you can buy flowers and gifts at 1-800-Flowers.com quickly and easily on your mobile phone. You can also use Google Wallet to buy on Rockport.com and FiveGuys.com (at select locations).

Not only does Google Wallet save you time, it can also save you money. For a limited time, buy with Google Wallet on your mobile device and get $10 off at 1-800-Flowers.com and $20 off at Rockport.com (some restrictions apply).

The hardware spec of the Nexus 10 are incredible: a 10-inch screen has a 2560 x 1600 resolution, for a pixel density of 300ppi (compared with the 264ppi of Apple’s iPad with Retina display), a dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU, paired with a quad-core Mali T604 GPU and 2GB of RAM. Most interest captures the announcement that the tablet is coming with two NFC chips. This would allow the use of antennas inside the body. (on at the back and one at the front).

For NFC usecases this would bring additional potential, when the tablet is used in B2C usecases, where two persons are interacting with an application at the same time.

CorFire is part of SK C&C Telecom and already provides services to Google for their wallet as already revealed in the past. A Vodafone spokesman said that any service offering launched based on CorPay’s technology “will be compatible with the standards chosen by Weve”, the joint venture between Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica’s O2 that’s working to create a common mobile payments platform — formerly Weve was known as Project Oscar.

VIVOTech has received more than 100 Mio. of venture capital since its founding in 2001. The company offered a wide range of products like readers, a TSM, wallets and a loyalty schema for NFC enabled devices. Yet it has not been disclosed how much money Sequent paid for the deal and how many employees will join Sequent Software. Sequent was founded in 2010 and has headquarters in Redwood City, California. Fueled by robust funding led by Opus Capital and SK Telecom Ventures, Sequent Software combines expertise in the payments industry with innovation in the mobile ecosystem to offer next-generation credential management solutions.

The customers require an NFC enabled SIM Card in their device to use the service. Currently there is no information on the service either on the Isis site or on the website of T-Mobile US. On the website there is a list of merchants accepting Isis payments. Isis is a payment brand that uses EMV technology on the lower level. The UICC therefore contains a MasterCard paypass applet, which personalized in an EMV way. In contrast to the open loop EMV brands (which Google actually makes use of), Isis decided to take a white label product and make its own payment schema, which only can be used at dedicated merchants.