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Transactions with Visa payWave cards in Taiwan grew by 19% during the third quarter with spending up by 23%, according to Visa’s country office in Taiwan.

The MCX consortium, the group of major U.S. merchants planning to roll out their own mobile wallet, will primarily use bar codes and cloud-based technologies to start off with, not NFC.

Taiwan-based MediaTek, a major supplier of processor chips for smartphones, has announced its first NFC chip, which it says could support three secure elements at one time.

While a sizable percentage of UK consumers say they are ready to use their smartphones as mobile wallets to make payments at the physical point of sale–especially if they receive incentives and security assurances–mobile wallets are unlikely to take off in 2013, according to UK-based market research firm ICM Research.

Automakers BMW and Hyundai both recently announced plans to incorporate NFC functionality into their vehicles.

Retail locations accepting MasterCard PayPass contactless payment doubled in Europe in 2012, according to MasterCard Worldwide, a development that helps clear a path for more rollouts of NFC payment.

Facing growing pressure from a dissident shareholders group, Oded Bashan has submitted his resignation as chairman of Israel-based contactless and NFC vendor On Track Innovations, a company he co-founded 22 years ago.

ARM, Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient today launched their joint venture, Trustonic, seeking to encourage broad deployment of technology that puts smart card-like security right on the main application processor of smartphones and other devices.

MasterCard Worldwide and U.S.-based mobile-wallet software supplier C-SAM today announced a partnership and investment by MasterCard, expanding on their earlier working relationship.

Transport for London plans to begin allowing riders to use contactless bank cards to pay fares on buses later this week, according to a report.

U.S.-based Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of processor chips to smartphone makers, has entered the NFC market–a move that could substantially expand the availability of NFC-enabled smartphones.

Large Spanish retail bank, La Caixa, plans to begin distributing 200,000 contactless stickers this month, deciding not to wait for NFC commercial launches to start its mobile-payment rollout.