Winners announced at CMA 2012. Your Contactless Intelligence Weekly Twitter Feed

Dear Readers,

Last week's Contactless Intelligence Spring Conference and the Contactless & Mobile Awards were our biggest and best ever! So it would be remiss of me not to exploit my position of editor and publisher of C-ITV to use this newsletter as a platform to thank the very kind and generous individuals and companies who made these two events such a great success.

First a big thanks goes out to all our speakers and panelists. Thank you for making the day interesting and perhaps more importantly - relevant. CI has always tried to report 'in the moment'. We focus less on future roadmaps, forecasted results and long-term strategies. Instead we embrace what is happening 'right here, right now'. It is only by looking at case studies of actual implementations that we believe the industry can truly move forward - so I want to thank everyone who shared their stories with the CISCS attendees. It is more important to the industry than you can imagine.

Thank you to our sponsors; Giesecke and Devrient, American Express, The Escher Group and Proxama. Your support is invaluable to us at CI.

The 2012 Contactless and Mobile A wards were the biggest we have ever done. It always impresses me that our finalists travel so far to receive their awards. From Turkey, Romania, Austria, France, the Netherlands – they all came along to share in the evening. We had a truly impressive cast of winners this year who richly deserved to win. The press releases and social media rollout on these awards are still rolling out as I write this. Not an hour goes by when I don't see another release on my RSS feeds or roll across Twitter (and I am talking global) - it is truly breathtaking that our little show is having such an impact! Thank you to Wendy Atkins and her team of expert judges.

I would like to single out a few individuals whose support and guidance helped shape  the awards this year. Thanks goes out to Mark Austin and Sarah Heyes of Visa Europe and Claire Maslen, Sue Bathurst and Craig Oldroyd of O2. Thank you all for your sponsorship and support of the CMA's.

I would like to thank our sponsors and supporters with the Contactless & NFC Cities League, or as we called it this year - the Contactless & NFC Country League. A thank you goes to our sponsors MasterCard and James Davlouros, and to Samsung and Thomas Arenz and Jörg Suchy. Gentlemen, thank you for your support.

Finally, a big thank you goes to some of the key players behind the scenes at Krowne who host the Contactless Intelligence events. Thanks goes to Karen Brindley from Krowne Communications (UK) Ltd and to Susan Hicks and in Germany, to Veronica Atkins and Katja Wiedner from Krowne Communications GmbH. And of course, a thank you goes to our chairman of the day - Ram Banerjee. For a single day and evening event, it takes a awfully long time to plan, develop and implement so that all goes off without a hitch. My personal thanks to you all.

That's all I wanted to say on the matter apart from my thanks to you, the reader, for patiently indulging me in this editorial. I can assure you that normal service will resume next week but in the meantime - look out for video footage shot on the day and for some interesting films to come, including a drive around London in the back of a cab with VeriFone's own, Mark Roberts!

Until then.

Steve Atkins

Contactless Intelligence

Payments & m-Commerce

O2 launches Mobile Wallet http://wp.me/p1Jrjn-zo

Mobile payment platforms won't really disrupt finance http://bit.ly/JP4rZ7

In Canada, phones poised to challenge credit cards http://bit.ly/JP45Sp

Google Puts Wallet Phone on Sale Directly to U.S. Consumers http://bit.ly/JP3YpS

Gemalto selected by América Móvil, Banamex & Banco Inbursa as tech provider for Transfer mobile payment service http://bit.ly/Jkxdfb

86% of Baku population expressed their loyalty to contactless payments via mobile phone http://bit.ly/Jkx0sv

Fraud slows down uptake of mobile money payments http://bit.ly/Id7Yut

Telefónica UK Launches O2 Wallet; Promises NFC Later in 2012 http://bit.ly/JP4BzK

NRF Urges FTC To Move Cautiously On Mobile Payments http://bit.ly/JP4DaT

NFC & Mobile

German banks test NFC following EMV fraud reduction http://bit.ly/Id7TXG

Vodafone powers NFC service at Spanish university http://bit.ly/JkwZ87

Turkcell adds location-based offers to NFC payments platform http://bit.ly/Id7tRf

The trouble with NFC: it needs cooperation to succeed http://bit.ly/Id7QuU

Austrian McDonalds, supermarket test NFC in the cloud. http://bit.ly/JP41SK

Identive Adds Online Custom NFC Tags to its Industry Leading NFC Marketplace http://bit.ly/JP4xA2

Megafon to offer NFC payment for transport in Yekaterinburg http://bit.ly/JP4Gn5

Transportation, Ticketing & Loyalty

Vodafone Spain powers NFC bus ticketing service in Murcia http://bit.ly/Jkxe2V

Timwe offers mass tag platform http://bit.ly/Id7Fjw

The Future Of Mobile Marketing Has Arrived On Thinaire! http://prn.to/JP4q7t

Students can now take mass transit to school using ScholarChip contactless smart cards. http://bit.ly/JP4MLv

Ottawa becomes the first Canadian city to incorporate Near Field Communications for parking http://bit.ly/Iv8s4R

Other News & Opinion Articles

EU names and shames national authorities lagging on e-money rule changes http://bit.ly/JP4Qe5

SA near-field adoption a way off – Nashua http://bit.ly/Id7Nzi

Identive to Showcase NFC Solutions for Students and Campuses at NACCU Conference http://bit.ly/Id81GQ

Wentker Departs Visa; Bains Leaves GSM Association http://bit.ly/JP3LTJ

Oberthur Gets Telco Group TSM Contract but Loses Key French Bank http://bit.ly/JP4019