ViVOtech, the near field communication (NFC) software and systems company, has raised $24 million in Series C funding from Singapore’s EDBI, SingTel Innov8, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Alloy Ventures, Citi Ventures (the venture arm of Citigroup), Draper Fisher Jurveston, DFJ Gotham, First Data Corporation, Miven Ventures, Motorola Mobility, Nokia Growth Partners and NCR. This brings ViVOtech’s total funding to $80 million.
Founded in 2001, ViVOtech develops payment software, NFC smart posters, contactless readers/writers, and over the air card provisioning, and transaction management infrastructure software. ViVOtech has installed more than 800,000 NFC systems in 35 countries. The company’s readers are found in big-name retailers and stores such as McDonalds, Home Depot and Whole Foods as well is in taxi cabs.
For background, NFC enables people to make transactions, exchange digital content and connect electronic devices with a simple touch. As we’ve seen with Google, Android phones such as the Nexus S are being built with NFC chips, making your cell phone a mobile wallet. It’s unclear if Apple will add NFC technology to the iPhone 5.
The company says that new funds will be used for further international expansion of ViVOtech’s NFC software and systems in Asia and other markets.
ViVOTech’s technology is frequently licensed by other companies and merchants to enable mobile payments. The company got a pretty big boost recently when Google used ViVOtech’s technology for their recentt NFC push, Google Wallet.
For merchants that want to accept Google Wallet payments, ViVOtech is providing NFC point of sale readers. In addition, ViVOtech has worked with Google, merchants and POS software vendors to provide integration between NFC POS readers and current POS software.
ViVOtech has also reportedly been looking at an IPO in 2012. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the company has 80 percent of the U.S. market for NFC readers, and the company sales are in “double-digit millions.” And the NFC market is expected to reach $50 billion by 2014.