Berg Insight Said NFC Phone Sales to 100 Million This Year

According to research firm Berg Insight , about 100 million mobile phone with NFC will be sold in 2012, about triple the sales from last year.

Handset vendors released more than 40 NFC-enabled models in 2011, hoping to tap emerging market for mobile payments.

NFC enables data to be exchanged wirelessly over distances of a few centimeters, meaning mobile phones can be used to pay for goods, store electronic tickets, download music and swap photos and business cards.

Berg Insight said it expects the global market for NFC phones to grow to 700 million phones in 2016 from 30 million in 2011.

Boku Unveiled NFC-Based Mobile Wallet Service with MasterCard

San Francisco-based Boku recently announced the partnership with MasterCard to offer mobile wallet service to enable consumer to make mobile payments.

BOKU Accounts enables merchants to create easy-to-manage loyalty programs as well as targeted offers to reach customers through mobile apps, SMS text messages, push notifications or e-mails. The platform also offers consumers real-time visibility into spending and budgets tied to their account. The online campaign management system of the BOKU Accounts platform also provides merchants with sophisticated analytics so they can manage and modify these offer programs over time to maximize consumer reach and repeat business.

The BOKU Accounts MasterCard Prepaid card is issued by IDT, which is a regulated bank, licensed by the Financial Services Commission (FSC), Gibraltar, under the Banking Act 1992, pursuant to a license from MasterCard International Incorporated. Issuing banks will vary based on geographic region.

Apple Awarded Patent on Parental Controls

Apple recently was awarded a patent (US 8,127,982) on parental controls. Here is the abstract of the patent:

Various techniques are provided for establishing financial transaction rules to control one or more subsidiary financial accounts. In one embodiment, a financial account management application stored on a processor-based device may provide an interface for defining financial transaction rules to be applied to a subsidiary account. The financial transaction rules may be based upon transaction amounts, aggregate spending amounts over a period, merchant categories, specific merchants, geographic locations, or the like. The device may update the financial transaction rules associated with a subsidiary account by communicating the rules to an appropriate financial server. Accordingly, transactions made using the subsidiary account by a subsidiary account holder may be evaluated against the defined rules, wherein an appropriate control action is carried out if a financial transaction rule is violated.

I had a difficult time to understand the meanings from this abstract and the following figures from the patent may help understanding the content.

This patent is actually pretty good way to allow parents to control how much their children on certain credit cards. Currently it's not easy for parents to monitor what their children spend using the credit cards. Although there is a limit for children's cards, parents have no way to control what their kids can buy as long as the purchase amount is less than the available credit line. The beauty of this patent is that parents will get a notification on their phone at the time when certain purchases are made. Parents have the choice to accept or decline the authorization for the purchase. The notification can be triggered by certain business rules, like single purchase amount. Another interesting feature is that Parents can also review the account summary, transactions via iTune. Apple has controlled the songs apps on iphone/ipad and it will control next big one, Wallet.

Here are some interesting figures from the patent.