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The Smart Card Alliance has expanded its Contactless Payments Council to include mobile payments, the alliance announced today. The council's new name will be the Contactless and Mobile Payments Council, and its mission will include both Near Field Communication and mobile payments, according to the alliance. The alliance also announced the committee's steering committee of 11 members and three new officers. Deborah Baxley, IBM Global Services' leader of the strategy and change consulting practice for financial services in North America, is chair of the new committee. John Suchanec, senior vice president of payment research and development strategies at Bank of America Corp.'s card services group, is vice chair. Mohammed Khan, president and founder of Vivotech Inc., is secretary. "The Smart Card Alliance's inclusion of mobile contactless probably is less of (an) expansion of scope and more likely the beginning of an eventual shift in scope," Red Gillen, senior analyst for Celent LLC, tells CardLine. "Mobile contactless is a hot topic, and it's probably a hotter topic right now than contactless plastic payment cards. The Smart Card Alliance would run the risk of making itself less relevant if it did not begin focusing on mobile contactless."
