Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced today the completion of a global joint venture. The name of the company is Venyon, and it is 57 percent owned by G&D and 43 percent owned by Nokia.
Venyon prepares the way for mobile operators, transport operators, retailers, banks, credit card companies, and providers of digital services and media worldwide to offer their services and applications to consumers’ Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled mobile devices. With the company’s Secure Chip Management services, consumer applications, such as credit cards or transport tickets can be securely and easily downloaded via a mobile operator’s network to those devices.
The Venyon headquarters are located in Helsinki, Finland and another office in Munich, Germany is already established. Further locations are planned to be opened in Dallas, U.S. and Singapore. Lauri Pesonen, Director and Head of NFC Consumer Solutions at Nokia, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Venyon as of January 1, 2007. Before joining Nokia in 2004, Pesonen was working in the smart card industry for Setec, now part of Gemalto.
Source: Nokia PR
Anything to speed up the adoption rate of NFC is fantastic in my opinion. Hurry up already!