MONTE CARLO, Monaco – At WIMA today, Nokia announced an NFC version of the recently launched Nokia Lumia 610. Orange will be the first operator to bring the new Nokia Lumia 610 NFC to the market.

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What is NFC?

• NFC stands for Near Field Communication. It’s a way of allowing two devices of any kind to talk to each other using radio communication, by simply touching them together or holding them in close proximity.
• With an NFC-enabled phone you can transfer items such as photos or contact information from one phone to another by just placing them together.
• Providing there is a secure element in place in the phone (as with the Nokia Lumia 610 NFC), you can make payments in stores and also use your phone as a travel ticket – much like the Oyster Card system in London.
• Pairing your phone with an accessory is easy if you’ve got a phone with NFC. The accessory also has to have NFC.

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The Lumia 610 is the most affordable smartphone in the Lumia range, making it the perfect introduction to both Windows Phone and NFC for a younger, broader audience.  

The new smartphone can pair with NFC accessories and read NFC tags with a single tap.

It also has all the necessary hardware and software for NFC payment and ticketing solutions. In fact, the Lumia 610 NFC has been certified for contactless payments both with MasterCard for their PayPass solution, and with Visa’s mobile application for payments at the point of sale, Visa payWave.

Nokia’s Andrea Bacioccola explains how people can use NFC on the Lumia 610 NFC in the video at the top of the page.

On the technical side, Nokia did this by adding an NFC software stack on top of the Windows Phone platform. The necessary NFC hardware was added into this version of the Lumia 610.

Nokia has a long history in NFC. The Lumia 610 NFC is the 8^th NFC smartphone Nokia has introduced in the past two years.

Nokia also has a growing range of NFC-compatible accessories, such as the new Nokia BH-310, an NFC Bluetooth headset designed for people who spend a lot of time in their cars.

Have you already started using NFC? Let us know in the comments below.