Nokia revamps Lumia 610 Windows Phone with NFC

Nokia has revealed an NFC-enabled version of its entry-level Windows Phone handset, the Lumia 610.

The Lumia 610 NFC was announced on Wednesday at the WIMA conference in Monaco. The show is devoted to the near-field communications (NFC) contactless technology, which is used in travel smartcards, bank cards and increasingly mobile phones.

Both Visa and Mastercard have certified the new device for contactless mobile payments, Nokia said in a statement.

"We're bringing NFC right across our portfolio, and together with our ever-growing range of NFC accessories we're making it easy for people to connect via a single tap," Ilari Nurmi, the head of product marketing at Nokia's Smart Devices division, said in the statement. "We're also enabling operators and other service providers to build NFC payment and ticketing [services] on top of our smartphones."

The Lumia 610 NFC is scheduled to appear in the third quarter of the year. Orange has already said it will carry the device.

According to a separate blog post, the new handset will be the eighth that Nokia has brought out with NFC capabilities. The phone company also makes various accessories, such as Bluetooth headsets, that can be quickly paired with such handsets using NFC.