Shipments of so-called MFF2 SIM cards designed to withstand the harsh conditions of various M2M deployments rose by 42%, to 5 million, between 2011 and 2012, according to new figures released by trade association the SIMalliance.

The organization said the increase illustrates the potential of the M2M opportunity and expects to see further growth in the next few months as applications are introduced in new vertical markets.

Last week both Visa and MasterCard announced European mobile payments partnerships.  On Monday, MasterCard announced that it has entered into a mobile payments partnership with Deutsche Telekom, while Visa announced on Friday that it had joined forces with Telefonica Digital to offer a similar service.

On Thursday, Orange, a mobile operator in France with over 27 million subscribers, and Gemalto, a provider of digital security, announced a large-scale rollout of a SIM-based NFC service to enable NFC-readiness for mass deployment of mobile contactless services.

Last week, Everything Everywhere, the UK’s biggest communications company, and Nokia Siemens Networks, a telecom equipment vendor, announced a partnership for the remote stock monitoring of smart vending machines.

Last week, Everything Everywhere announced an agreement with Transport operator Stagecoach Group to offer consumers with a way to use mobile phones as tickets for public transportation. The two companies have unveiled the UK's first Government-standard commercial deployment of mobile contactless transport ticketing, which could lead to a nationwide roll out across select bus and rail services in 2013.

Taoglas USA, Inc, a provider of antennas for the M2M market, last week announced a new Near Field Communications (NFC) antenna and tag service for M2M devices. The FXT.01 NFC tag antenna and FXR.01 NFC reader antenna operate at 13.56MHz and provide a well-matched solution (50ohms) for NFC readers, says the company. 

A major theme coming out of CTIA Wireless in New Orleans this week is mobile payments.  This theme manifested itself on Monday with two major announcements by MasterCard.  The two announcements included results from a mobile payments readiness index produced by MasterCard, as well as the launch of PayPass wallet services.

A new study by Juniper Research forecasts that NFC will facilitate transactions valued at $74 billion by 2015, as NFC will be increasingly used for the payment of goods in-store and as transport tickets.  The increasing use of mobile devices as an alternative to credit cards and paper tickets is one of the fastest growing segments of the mobile commerce market, says Juniper Research.  

Gemalto, a provider of digital security, made a few major machine-to-machine announcements at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, including an end-to-end service for M2M and NFC content over LTE networks, and a plug-and-play M2M communication terminal from Cinterion.

With Mobile World Congress only days away, news is already beginning to flood the airways. Mobile payments are one of the many hot topics that are sure to be talked about next week. Visa and Samsung have already revealed they will be showcasing a mobile payments application for the Summer Olympics in London at MWC, while other companies like Ericsson added new services to its already existing m-commerce portfolio. Below are just a few of the many mobile payments announcements TelecomEngine expects to come out of Mobi