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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive Insight –Apple is getting some pushback from banks as it seeks to expand its payments service, Apple Pay, outside of the U.S., where its U.S. business model along with other characteristics of the U.S. market will not translate well, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive – The Royal Bank of Canada plans a commercial launch of host-card emulation in 2015 following a small employee pilot of HCE payments, but declined to specify a date, head of payments innovation Jeremy Bornstein told NFC times in an interview.

NFC Times Exclusive – A year after its launch of closed-loop HCE NFC payments for BlackBerry 10 devices, Canadian-based coffee chain Tim Hortons has yet to roll out HCE for Android, continuing to offer only a bar-code-based version of the gift card service instead on non-BlackBerry platforms, although mobile app and HCE vendor Clearbridge Mobile says the BlackBerry launch received a positive response from customers.

Quebec-based credit union Desjardins says that it expects gradual, or what it calls “progressive,” adoption of the SIM-based NFC mobile payments service, which it launched commercially this week, following an earlier soft launch.

Canadian telco joint venture EnStream has signed a new three-year deal with BlackBerry, as it expands its TSM service into provisioning secure payment applications for Canadian banks.

Canada’s TD Canada Trust today announced the launch of its NFC-enabled TD Mobile Payment service, a Visa-branded credit application, which will be available on NFC SIM cards issued by all three of Canada’s major mobile operators.

NFC Times Exclusive: RBC Secure Cloud Explained: 
As one of the first commercial launches of cloud-based open-loop payments using NFC, observers will be watching closely how well Royal Bank of Canada’s RBC Secure Cloud service does in the market.

Canada-based coffee and fast-food chain Tim Hortons has launched what is believed to be the first full commercial NFC mobile-payments service using host-card emulation.

NFC Times Exclusive: As Canada’s NFC infrastructure continues to grow, two NFC mobile wallets, one from a mobile carrier, the other from a partnership between two financial institutions, will launch in Canada over the next few months.

Canada’s fifth largest credit card issuer, Desjardins Group, plans to launch NFC mobile payments in 2014, and has become the first issuer to sign up with mobile operator joint venture EnStream in hopes of reaching subscribers from multiple telcos in the country.