CHECK IT OUT:Intermarche's NFC shopping service uses SES G-tag+shelf edge labels

French supermarket chain Intermarche has introduced an NFC shopping service at its lssy-les-Moulineaux, Paris store, enabling customers to add products to a digital shopping basket and receive personalised discount vochers with a tap of their NFC phone.

The spending limit for contactless transactions is to be increased from £20(US $30)to £30(US $46) in September 2015, The UK Cards Association has told NFC World. The move follows the news last week that contactless card usage surged in the UK in 2014 to 319.2m transactions with total spend more than trebling to a record £2.32 bn.

Gemalto announced it will supply Government Printing Works (GPW) with the Sealys electronic smart card-based identification solution for a national identity program in South Africa.

GPW will leverage Gemalto’s secure embedded software to protect the holder’s image and biometric data within the secure identity e-document. Moreover, GPW selected the Sealys document fitted with the contactless feature, ensuring added levels of convenience with unrivaled security for citizens.

Swimmers will soon be able to use NFC wristbands to set up personal training regimes and measure their performance in the pool. A pilot in five pools in Israel will use the wristbands, a mobile app and light runners along the bottom of swimming lanes connected to LCD displays on the pool wall.

France's second largest banking group BPCE is to pilot a payment card that replaces the three-figure security code on the back of the card with a mini-screen that displays a code which automatically changes periodically.

The cards,aimed at improving the security of online payments, are to be provided by Oberthur Technologies(OT) in partnership with payment services provider Natixis Payment Solutions and will be the first to use OT's Motion Code cryptogram solution. They will be piloted by the French banks Banque Populaire and Caisse d'Epargne with 1000 customers in September 2015.

British fashion designer Henry Holland is to integrate NFC and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technologies into clothing designs as part of his spring/summer 2016 collection that will feature on stage during London Fashion Week in September.

Facebook users in the US will soon be able to make and receive secure mobile payments for free via the social network's Messenger app. The service is rolling out 'over the coming months'. Facebook says.

Payments can be made by tapping a '$' icon within the app and entering the amount the user wants to send, before tapping 'Pay' to add a Visa or MasterCard debit card issued by a US bank.

A new NFC-enabled ring being funded on KickStarter is attempting to bring authentication to your finger. The ring’s technology is far from complex, consisting of a titanium band and two inlays containing NFC chips. The two rings each serve their own purpose, with the larger, top chip dedicated to public information and smaller, housed on the inside of the ring reserved for private information.

Tulane and Quinnipiac universities are piloting a near field communication system on campus from Blackboard. The pilot is using NFC-enabled Android handsets and students can use the devices for physical access control, payments at the point-of-sale, vending, laundry, copying and printing.