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, Banks of American 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 right 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 and it will 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 news because consumers have a trusted relationship with their banks. While Google and the carriers through their 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 any 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. It might due to the fact that they’re not all 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, are not rushing to enable other wallets like Google Wallet to work on their NFC-enabled phones. It doesn’t appear like 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 Verizon is not a Google Wallet partner like Sprint is. 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 different 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, I think 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 their walk them 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 overall.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• 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

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You may recall Intel’s 710 “Lyndonville” and 720 “Ramsdale” enterprise SSDs outted by a leaked roadmap back in April, but details were as thin as high mountain air. Luckily, German site Computer Base has obtained what appears to be a full spec sheet for the aforementioned drives. Starting with the 710, this 25nm HET MLC — a more durable variant of MLC — device will come in 100GB, 200GB, and 300GB flavors, and it claims to have read and write speeds at up to 270 MB/s and 210 MB/s, respectively, along with a 3Gbps SATA connection.

Things are a bit wild with the 720: not only does it have 34nm SLC chips making up the 200GB and 400GB versions, but it also boasts some truly insane read and write speeds of up to 2200 MB/s and 1800 MB/s, respectively. Yes, 2200 MB/s and 1800 MB/s, garnished by the fast 4K IOPs as well. We had our doubts initially, but looking at the 6Gbps PCIe interface and the much higher power draw, we think there’s a good chance for this to come into reality. Well, only time will tell if these numbers will stick around for the Q3 launch this year — not that our wallets will want to know, mind you. Hit the source link for the full lowdown.

Intel’s 710 ‘Lyndonville’ and 720 ‘Ramsdale’ SSDs see full spec leak well ahead of release originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The word is that once upon a time, eBay’s PayPal tried to buy Jack Dorsey’s Square. Knowing Dorsey’s ambition, it was obvious that wasn’t going to work out. What was clear though – PayPal knew that it had to get a piece of the non-web transaction business and jump on the big “people-to-people economy” trend that is starting to gain traction.

Today, the company announced it’s buying small Boston-based mobile-payment startup Fig Card, who’se founders Max Metral and Hasty Granbery will go to work for eBay’s Paypal division.

The FigCard frames itself as “a new way to use your fancy iPhone to pay for things”– (note – you can also use your fancy Android and select fancy Blackberry). Consumers download the app and use it at participating retail stores. Merchants accept the mobile payments in stores through a USB device that plugs into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal. The cashier never sees the customer’s credit card number.

The acquisition fit’s into Paypal’s strategy to acquire  existing technology and talent to help build it’s mobile and platform businesses. In a blog post announcing the deal, Peter Chu, PayPal’s senior director of mobile, local and new ventures said Fig Card fit Paypal’s vision of a future that not separates payment from the PC.

We loved their approach to point-of-sale, particularly because it was driven by the same vision that we have at PayPal – in the future,  transactions can be as smart as a computer and not as dumb as paper. We won’t need our physical wallets. We’ll be able to pay any way we want, from any device, anywhere in the world with both flexibility and privacy.

Keith Rabois, who runs Square and was a key executive during the pre-eBay days at PayPal recently told us his company was “going after 26 million folks who are not merchants in a classic sense.” I guess, so does PayPal.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• What Local Social Commerce Needs to Really Take Off
• What Local Social Commerce Needs to Really Take Off
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