NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple has announced overdue plans to launch Apple Pay in China early next year, touting a list of 15 major banks that will enable customers to load their credit and debit cards in its Wallet app, including China’s big four state-owned banks. Meanwhile, Samsung followed with an announcement of its planned launch of Samsung Pay in China, which was also expected.
NFC Times Exclusive – SHANGHAI, China:China UnionPay is continuing negotiations with Apple and some sources told NFC Times it is gearing up for a planned launch of Apple Pay in China.
Payment network China UnionPay and China-based handset maker ZTE have disclosed an agreement to enable contactless payment on embedded chips in two of ZTE’s latest high-end Android phones.
China UnionPay has announced that 15 banks now have access to its TSM platform, while a total of 30 banks have signed a cooperation agreement to eventually use the platform.
China’s No. 2 mobile operator China Unicom, along with China Merchants Bank, today announced plans to launch an NFC payments service next month in Shanghai.
China’s giant mobile operator, China Mobile, and the country's big domestic payment network, China UnionPay, have signed an agreement to cooperate on mobile payment, including using SIM cards in NFC phones.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based wearables maker Fitbit in October plans to release its first non-smartwatch supporting its payments service, Fitbit Pay, with the recent unveiling of its new health and fitness tracker Charge 3–but as with its Versa smartwatch, released in April, the NFC payments feature will only be available on a “special edition” version of the tracker in the U.S. and likely in some other markets.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Three years after its launch in South Korea, consumer take-up of Samsung Pay remains lackluster, despite the company’s efforts to hype up its newly released figures.
NFC TIMES Exclusive – NXP Semiconductors, the dominant supplier of NFC chips and secure elements for smartphones and wearables, is seeking to push further up the value chain, offering such services as a white-label wallet platform and provisioning of bank and transit payments applications.
NFC TIMES Exclusive –Some major cities plan to enable their transit fare payments in the Google Pay wallet, using NXP’s Mifare 2GO provisioning service, NXP Semiconductors confirmed to NFC Times, adding that the implementations could put the fare-payments applications on secure elements.
NFC TIMES Exclusive – Vancouver-area transit authority TransLink is seeing modest consumer take-up for its new open-loop contactless fare payments service and around 6% of the contactless EMV credit transactions are from NFC mobile wallets so far, NFC Times has learned.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second-largest city, plans to enable riders to enter subway gates by tapping contactless EMV credit cards and NFC wallets by the end of the year, working with Mastercard.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Struggling U.S.-based watchmaker Fossil has introduced NFC for the first time, in its Q line of smartwatches, hoping the support for Google Pay and other smartwatch applications will help the mainly traditional watchmaker to stay competitive as more consumers turn away from traditional watches.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Apple released the number of global transactions for its Apple Pay service–believed to be the first time it has done so–as the tech giant touted a tripling of transactions to more than 1 billion for the latest quarter. Apple also disclosed plans by two more large U.S. retailers to accept contactless payments and announced that another major country, Germany, would support Apple Pay, later this year.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight –SoftBank Group’s reported plans to launch a mobile digital payments service in Japan by year’s end–collaborating with Indian mobile payments provider Paytm–is an attempt by SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son to do what other large companies have tried and failed to do: wean Japanese consumers off of cash.
NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based wearables maker Garmin has introduced a fourth smartwatch to its lineup of devices supporting its NFC-enabled payments service, Garmin Pay, the high-end D2 Delta watch series targeted at aviators or aviator wannabes.
NFC TIMES EXCLUSIVE Insight – Hong Kong’s MTR Corp., which runs the city’s subway system, next month will accept tenders from technology and payments providers for a QR code-based fare collection service that will serve as an alternative to its much-used contactless Octopus card.
NFC TIMES Exclusive – NFC-based student ID cards provisioned to Apple Wallet beginning this fall won’t include the open-loop debit payments that are often part of plastic student ID cards, NFC Times has learned.
