NXP announces industry standard NFC chip

New contactless payment handsets due in Q3

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11 May 2009 13:56 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Contactless payment with your mobile phone is a step closer to wider adoption as an industry development that sees a universal platform created for the technology, has now been announced.

Philips' NXP has unveiled what it says is the world's first truly industry standard Near Field Communication controller, that's said to deliver "a fully compliant platform for handset manufacturers and operators to introduce next generation NFC devices and services".

The new NXP PN544 chip will let mobile phone users access a new range of contactless applications such as mobile payments, transport (like the Oyster scheme on the Tube) and event ticketing as well as data sharing directly from the mobile phone SIM.

Claiming low power consumption, the chip is backwards compatible with systems already in place around the world.

NXP says its PN544 is currently being sampled by a "number of major handset manufacturers" with mass availability planned for Q3 of 2009, at which point we should see some new NFC-enabled handsets, like Nokia's 6216 classic, hitting the market. Bring it on.