First Data Enables Google Wallet Purchases at Cantaloupe Systems Vending Machines

PRESS RELEASE

Dec. 1, 2011, 2:19 p.m. EST

Giving Consumers Option to Pay for Snacks With a Single Tap of Their Phone

SAN FRANCISCO, CA and ATLANTA, GA, Dec 01, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Cantaloupe Systems, the leading vending optimization platform provider, is joining with First Data Corporation, a global leader in electronic commerce and payment processing, to implement near-field communication (NFC) reader technology in thousands of United States vending machines. Using Google Wallet, a mobile payment application that uses NFC technology, customers will be able to make purchases by tapping their phones at vending machines installed with the Cantaloupe Systems.

Google Wallet is compatible with the MasterCard PayPass(R) contactless system, already available in thousands of retail stores, and will expand to accommodate other NFC payment systems as they come to market.

"Our goal as a company is to bring leading-edge retail technology to the vending industry, and you can't get more leading-edge than Google Wallet, which will allow consumers to buy everything from electronics to snacks using their smartphones," said Anant Agrawal, co-founder and CMO of Cantaloupe Systems. "We're here to help our customers deliver wider choice and better service to their customers. Adding this cashless mobile payment option -- and its potential extensions into improved merchandising -- is a great step toward accomplishing that."

The NFC-enabled vending machines are owned and operated by Cantaloupe Systems customers, including CC Vending, which serves the tri-state area surrounding New York City; Black Tie Services and Midlantic Vending, which serve the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area; and Mark Vend, which serves the Chicago metropolitan area. In addition to the NFC enablement, all these machines are equipped with Cantaloupe Systems' Seed technology, which monitors, reports, and analyzes real-time sales data over the Web.

"The applications for NFC payments are vast and by expanding the user experience to the vending market, we are providing customers with a fun and engaging way to purchase goods at vending machines and even get offers and coupons," said Dom Morea, SVP and division manager, Advanced Solutions and Innovation, First Data. "This partnership is another step in the payments evolution that First Data is driving across our solutions integrating mobile payments into consumers' everyday lives; making payments interactive, fast and convenient."

"The merchandising value here goes beyond customer convenience to building customer loyalty and frequency of purchase in the mobile age," said Mike Cascione, President of CC Vending. "With mobile payment solutions like Google Wallet augmenting the customer information we're already receiving from Cantaloupe Systems' wireless Seed technology, we'll be able to offer custom-tailored promotions keyed to individual product preferences."

About First Data Around the world, every second of every day, First Data makes payment transactions secure, fast and easy for merchants, financial institutions and their customers. First Data leverages its vast product portfolio and expertise to drive customer revenue and profitability. Whether the choice of payment is by debit or credit card, gift card, check or mobile phone, online or at the checkout counter, First Data takes every opportunity to go beyond the transaction.

About Cantaloupe Systems San Francisco-based Cantaloupe Systems, Inc. is the fastest-growing wireless-enabled vending optimization platform provider. The company was founded in 2002 by engineers Mandeep Arora, a second-generation vending professional, and Anant Agrawal to provide automated merchandising and business intelligence technology to the $55 billion global vending industry. The Cantaloupe Retail Optimization Platform (CROP) applies state of the art business intelligence and analytics to remotely-monitored real-time vending sales data to suggest optimized next-best-step business decisions. The result: vending operators can generate the greatest revenue and margin from each machine with optimized service efficiencies and reduced operational cost. Operators using CROP average $35,000 in annual savings per route, can replenish 80 percent more machines per week and can reduce their carbon footprint by 40 percent through the elimination of unnecessary truck travel and smaller loads per truck.

Cantaloupe Systems is backed by Global Environment Fund of Chevy Chase, MD., and Foundation Capital of Menlo Park, CA. For more information, please visit http://www.cantaloupesystems.com .

MasterCard, mFoundry let banks create their own NFC mobile wallet – GigaOm

MasterCard and mFoundry, a mobile banking specialist, are poised to help banks launch potentially hundreds of NFC-based mobile wallets with a new partnership. The collaboration will allow banks that use mFoundry for their mobile banking apps to add support for contactless NFC MasterCard PayPass payments, turning those mobile banking apps into digital wallet payment tools.

MFoundry counts more than 500 banks, credit unions and other financial institutions as customers including two of the biggest banks, Bank of America and PNC. More than seven million users turn to apps and services built by mFoundry. Next year, these customers will be able to make touch-and-go payments at thousands of point-of-sale terminals with their mobile phones through the app they use regularly to check their bank statements, pay bills and transfer funds. MFoundry said it will update its mobile apps most likely in the first half of 2012 to include NFC support. It will then be up to banks to turn on the capability with MasterCard. Users will be able to connect their bank-issued debit and credit cards for NFC phone payments.

The two companies are also working on a mobile application that allows mobile phone operators to offer PayPass payments from their phones. MasterCard isn’t just striking a deal with mFoundry, it’s also becoming an investor in the start-up’s latest round. Larkspur, CA-based mFoundry is set to announce its latest round on Monday.

This collaboration is important because consumers have a trusted relationship with their banks. While Google and the carriers through the Isis joint venture are trying to become a trusted wallet provider with their NFC-based systems, they still don’t have the kind of financial trust that consumers place in their banks. So banks could be instrumental in helping NFC along by introducing the technology to their customers through their existing banking apps.

For NFC to work, “you have to get consumers to change their behavior and we think banks are in a great position to do that,” said James Anderson, SVP of Mobile for MasterCard.

This will also bring the banks into the NFC mobile wallet market, where they have not been very prominent so far. Citibank is an early partner in Google Wallet while Isis, the carrier-led joint venture has not announced banking partners, though it hopes to have a few on-board when it launches next year. But for the most part, the banks have been largely silent. That might due to the fact that they’re not comfortable with the terms of the Google Wallet and Isis. Now, they’re in a position to leverage NFC themselves without having to work with another provider.

Drew Sievers, CEO of mFoundry said it’s not just big banks that can jump on board. The integration with MasterCard means a lot of smaller financial institutions will be able to extend support for NFC payments through their mobile banking apps. And he said this could be a catalyst for growth for mFoundry, helping it attract even more banking customers.

“By working with MasterCard, mFoundry will be able to evolve and expand its financial services platforms to reach more consumers through new and existing clients,” said Sievers.

It’s still unclear if all these banking apps will get direct access to the NFC secure element to enable payments. There seems to some wrangling going on as the carriers in Isis, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, arenot rushing to enable other wallets like Google Wallet to work on their NFC-enabled phones. It doesn’t appear that the Galaxy Nexus, Google’s flagship Android 4.0 phone, will support Google Wallet even though it has an NFC chip. That may come down to the fact that, unlike Sprint  Verizon is not a Google Wallet partner. But Sievers believes that phones will eventually be wallet agnostic and that will allow banking apps with NFC support to flourish.

I think this could add some confusion in the short term as we hear a lot of competing voices urging users to get on board with their NFC wallet. In fact, the term mobile wallet is going to get abused early and often, I imagine. But ultimately, this could be a good thing. New technology needs advocates to help sell it to consumers and in the case of NFC, which can trigger some security concerns in consumers, having the banks walk customers through the process would be a good thing. Provided these banking apps can actually leverage existing NFC chips properly without interference, it will be another way to get NFC adopted.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• NFC will be driven by marketing and loyalty, not payments
• Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunities

CorFire and INSIDE Secure Team to Accelerate Rollout of NFC Applications

December 01, 2011 09:00 AM Eastern Time 

Companies Collaborating on Several Initiatives including Interoperability between NFC Secure Element and Trusted Service Manager

WIMA NFC USA 2011

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CorFire™, the mobile commerce business of SK C&C USA and the industry-leading mobile technology expert, and INSIDE Secure, a leader in semiconductor solutions for secure transactions and digital identity, today announced an agreement that promises to accelerate the rollout of NFC applications by ensuring that INSIDE Secure’s portfolio of MicroRead® and SecuRead® NFC solutions, as well as its Open NFC™ protocol stack, are interoperable with CorTSM™ - CorFire’s trusted service manager (TSM) solution.

“Seamless interoperability between the TSM and the NFC secure element is paramount to healthy NFC service deployments, and we are pleased to join forces with INSIDE Secure on validating the interoperability of our solutions to help speed up the rollout of NFC payment applications”

“Seamless interoperability between the TSM and the NFC secure element is paramount to healthy NFC service deployments, and we are pleased to join forces with INSIDE Secure on validating the interoperability of our solutions to help speed up the rollout of NFC payment applications,” said Dr. Jun Hong, CTO of CorFire.

“CorFire and INSIDE Secure are once again demonstrating their leadership in this market,” said Didier Serra, executive vice president and general manager for the United States at INSIDE Secure. “By validating INSIDE Secure’s NFC solutions with CorFire’s TSM solution, our customers can have confidence that their products built on our solutions will work as advertised, enabling wallet and other payment applications to be personalized on the mobile device.”

A third-generation product that sets a new standard for ease of integration, INSIDE Secure’s award-winning MicroRead NFC controller offers the broadest range of NFC options and provides the capacity to implement any secure element, including SIM or SD card, to support any business model. The INSIDE Secure SecuRead solution integrates the MicroRead NFC controller with a high-performance secure element and a GlobalPlatform-compliant Java Card™ operating system. The Open NFC protocol stack provides a complete open-source NFC middleware solution for mobile phones, embedded products and other devices.

CorTSM is CorFire’s standards compliant, enterprise-grade, service platform that delivers credentials securely to the mobile device. CorTSM plays a critical role in the mobile commerce value chain. For example, CorTSM enables financial institutions to issue credit card and debit cards securely to mobile devices. Other service providers will use CorTSM to issue or deliver open/closed loop gift cards, private label cards, and value-based rewards. The CorTSM solution benefits from CorFire’s expertise in Near Field Communication (NFC), mobile Over the Air (OTA), and smart card security and management, as well as a host of other must-have capabilities to ensure mobile data security.

To view a social media version of this release, visit, here.