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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

Inside Secure co-founder Bruno Charrat, who helped guide the NFC and contactless chip vendor’s technology roadmap for more than 17 years, has left the company.

Yet another veteran of Nokia’s pioneering NFC program has left the Finland-based device maker, with the departure of Jarkko Sevanto, who is heading up mobile-contactless programs for Visa in Asia Pacific, Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Turkcell’s chief of new technology, who played a key role in the launch of Turkcell’s mobile wallet, has left the telco to join a venture capital firm.

While Samsung Electronics has made known a major part of its embedded secure-element strategy for its NFC phones–with its work with Visa, MasterCard Worldwide and likely other payment schemes–Samsung isn’t the only device maker planning to enable applications on its NFC phones.

U.S.-based Identive Group reported an 81% year-over-year growth in transponder sales but a loss for the quarter overall, in preliminary second quarter results the vendor released Friday.

The MCX merchant consortium, which is gearing up to launch a mobile-wallet platform and bar-code based mobile-payment services in the U.S. has named the former head of mobile commerce for Barclaycard US as CEO, following a long search.

Hungary’s three mobile operators and the country’s largest bank have launched a large NFC-enabled mobile wallet pilot, as part of a mobile wallet association they formed two years ago with MasterCard Worldwide and a large loyalty program operator.

Everything Everywhere, the UK’s largest mobile operator, will promote its own payments service with its planned launch of NFC this month.

France-based Oberthur Technologies this week announced that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is using its embedded secure element technology, which had been earlier reported, as Samsung and its partners continue to gear up to introduce the technology to consumers.

The UK continues to expand its rollout of contactless, with Starbucks completing its deployment of contactless point-of-sale terminals at 550 coffee shops nationwide.

Japan is continuing its transition to standard NFC, with plans by large acquirers to deploy more than 400,000 point-of-sale terminals supporting MasterCard PayPass and confirmation by the No. 3 mobile operator that it has hired an outside trusted service manager as it prepares to introduce NFC services.

China Mobile and its mobile-payments partner China UnionPay today announced the launch of the telco’s much-anticipated NFC service and mobile wallet, in at least 14 major cities with applications available from nine banks.