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A Russian mobile wallet and services provider is turning to embedded secure elements in a trio of Android smartphones to launch a MasterCard PayPass application in Russia this summer.

The Isis joint venture continues to gear up for a nationwide launch of its NFC-enabled Isis Mobile Wallet this year and has been in discussions with major U.S. banks along with merchants, NFC Times has learned.

Samsung Electronics, along with Australia-based NFC marketing firm Tapit, UK-based out-of-home advertising company Chiel and terminal vendor VeriFone are rolling out NFC stickers to 80 taxis in the UK, as part of a promotional campaign for musician Robbie Williams’ upcoming Samsung-sponsored tour.

Israel-based contactless and NFC vendor On Track Innovations announced Monday it had received an order for 30,000 readers for point-of-sale terminals at retail gasoline stations in North America.

Canada’s largest bank and one of its three major mobile operators have announced plans to commercially launch NFC payments by the end of the year, following a trial this summer.

The GSMA mobile operator trade group is proposing a global standard for how point-of-sale terminals talk to NFC-enabled mobile wallets to enable consumers to redeem coupons and rewards.

Google’s vice president of wallet and payments has left the company, following a difficult tenure for the former PayPal executive, who had tried to establish the Google Wallet for physical world payments and offers.

U.S.-based Identive Group reported growing NFC and smart card reader business, but fell back into the red during for the first quarter, a loss it largely blamed on U.S. federal government budget cuts.

Vending technology company USA Technologies plans to integrate the SmartTap mobile-commerce software into all of the company’s nearly 100,000 NFC-enabled terminals on vending machines nationwide.

Smart card vendor association Eurosmart has substantially increased its estimate for NFC secure element shipments for 2012–by 50% to 150 million units–and forecasts that secure element shipments will grow by another 67% in 2013 to 250 million units.

More than half of credit card transactions at Australian supermarket chain Coles are contactless, and the merchant hit the milestone just over six months after rolling out contactless terminals across its more than 700 supermarkets.

NFC tag supplier Identive announced it has received orders for 4 million NFC tags to support a retail project in France and a payment and banking project in Africa.