Hot Concepts

Pay-Buy-Mobile

Inside Contactless (www.insidecontactless.com)
Category: Near Field Communication chips
Aix-en-Provence, France

French chip designer Inside Contactless specializes in chips for so-called near field communications, or NFC, which allows short-range wireless communication between electronic devices. NFC is helping cell phones morph into wallets around the world by letting users "swipe" their phones over a reader to make small payments. Inside's technology is playing a big role in NFC and the company won an award at this year's Mobile World Congress for "most innovative device-centric technology." Its MicroRead chip has been adopted by several major handset manufacturers and is a key component in the GSM Assn.'s Pay-Buy-Mobile initiative, a program for standardizing contactless payments using mobile phones.