NFC TimesThe premier source for news, analysis and commentary on
Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight ­– Visa this week announced a new list of 13 “partner” companies to help it distribute and manage Visa-generated tokens, which the network giant is promoting for use in what it hopes will be large-scale rollouts of Internet of Things devices that can do payments.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Apple Pay and the other major Pays wallets still only account for around 1% of card transactions in the U.S., three major processors told NFC Times. At least two of the processors say they haven’t seen growth in Apple Pay over at least the past year.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Shipments of NFC secure elements almost certainly fell in 2016, based on recent figures released by vendor association Eurosmart, though the group is again declining to release specific shipment figures for NFC cards and embedded chips, instead combining the NFC unit shipments with those for machine-to-machine modules.

NFC TIMES Exclusive –  NFC wallets are failing to catch on in the U.S., especially for in-store transactions, for a variety of reasons, including poor awareness among consumers and cashiers, lack of full buy-in from merchants, problems with certifying terminals for contactless and an insufficient value proposition, said industry players, including a representative from Google.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – LAS VEGAS, Nev.: It’s been more than two and a half years since Apple Pay launched in the U.S., and retail giant Wal-Mart Stores still is no closer to accepting NFC at its 4,000-plus stores in the U.S. then when Apple began rolling out its NFC-enabled mobile payments service in October of 2014.