Last week, I had a chance to talk to Rémy de Tonnac, who is the CEO of INSIDE Contactless. He was certainly upbeat. After all, his firm recently snagged an investment from Samsung Ventures America. In fact, some of the other investors include biggies like Nokia Growth Partners and Motorola Ventures.

Although, it's been a long journey. That is, INSIDE has been building its platform - which allows for contactless microprocessors - over the past ten years. But yes, things are starting to pay off.

INSIDE is focused on the so-called near field communications (NFC), which is a standard for mobile systems. Essentially, the technology helps facilitate mobile payments - which is likely to be a huge market.

However, for this to happen, Rémy believes that NFC must leverage innovation on the handset. For example, suppose you use your phone to pay for subway rides. So, wouldn't it be cool to receive an SMS message if your pass was about to expire?

Or, suppose you get an alert about a favorite band that will be in town next week. Perhaps you can get a video preview and, of course, buy some tickets?

"NFC can do things in a better way," said Rémy. "More importantly, it can also allow for new things - creating real value for consumers."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

INSIDE Contactless - taking mobile to the next frontier originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.