The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association that advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, and the Mobey Forum, a global financial industry forum whose mission is to facilitate the offering by banks of mobile financial services, today announced a Memorandum of Understanding between the two groups.
Under the provisions of the agreement, the NFC Forum and the Mobey Forum will work together to further ongoing efforts to create open standards that enable the delivery of services that provide secure and interoperable mobile financial transactions.
Koichi Tagawa, NFC Forum Chairman, and Liisa Kanniainen, Mobey Forum Executive Director, signed the agreement today in Oulu, Finland, during Mobile Monday. The two organizations share a common interest in fostering the successful use of mobile financial services, and the new agreement will enable progress toward this mutual objective. The Mobey Forum, whose members represent the entire Mobile Financial Services (MFS) Ecosystem, will communicate the critical business requirements of the financial community for consideration in open technical standards developed by the NFC Forum, many of whose members are mobile communications, semiconductor and consumer electronics companies.
"Financial services applications are among the key uses of NFC technology worldwide," said Mr. Tagawa. "As the global industry association driving mobile financial services, the Mobey Forum will be an invaluable ally in making it easier for mobile users everywhere to perform a broad range of financial services transactions."
The Mobey Forum Chairman Ron van Wezel of Deutsche Bank warmly welcomes the co-operation with NFC Forum: "Together with NFC Forum we can develop standards and remove other barriers to support banks to go to market faster with mobile payment solutions that their clients are looking for. We believe that the enablement of open services, open provisioning and technical standards, facilitate the creation of new services for growth and healthy financial returns in the entire ecosystem."
The signing coincides with the NFC Forum all-members meeting, taking place in Oulu August 31-September 6. During the week-long event, representatives from the 140 NFC Forum member organizations convene to advance initiatives focused on bringing Near Field Communication-enabled products and services to market. The face-to-face meeting gives NFC Forum committee, working group and task force members the opportunity to meet in more than 40 working sessions. The NFC Forum holds three all-members meetings a year; the next meeting will be held December 7-11 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.