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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

Netherlands-based contactless inlay manufacturer Smartrac has announced it is acquiring the RFID business of Finland-based UPM, making Smartrac the largest supplier of NFC tags, according to the companies.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia Monday launched its “Commbank Kaching” mobile-payment and banking app for iPhone customers, including making an NFC-enabled iPhone attachment available.

France-based Inside Secure has announced a deal to supply its NFC technology to Intel, as the giant U.S.-based chip maker considers incorporating NFC in its products.

Reports that Google is planning to launch its Google Wallet in the United Kingdom during the first quarter as a pilot is only a rumor, a source close to Google told NFC Times.

Infineon Technologies said it shipped at least 10 million embedded secure chips during both the third and fourth quarters of 2011 and predicts it will continue to sell “double-digit millions” of embedded chips each quarter after that.

China’s big domestic payment network, China UnionPay, is moving forward with plans to roll out mobile payment on microSD cards in full NFC phones–lining up one of China’s biggest banks and models from at least six handset makers for the initial rollout.

MasterCard Worldwide hopes to expand access to PayPass contactless-mobile payment, especially to customers of small banks and credit unions, with its new partnership with mobile-banking software provider mFoundry.

Dickson Chu, who headed the Google Wallet program at U.S.-based Citigroup, has left the bank to take a newly created post as senior vice president for merchant solutions at daily deal site LivingSocial.

NFC phone software from SIM vendor group the SIMalliance that helps phone app developers tie into the secure elements on NFC phones is getting strong support from mobile operators but not from Google, at least not yet.

Spain-based Telefónica Group and Research In Motion announced today an employee trial at Telefónica’s headquarters that will test up to three NFC-enabled BlackBerry models for payment and physical access control.

Open-loop payment of transit fares continued to gain momentum with transit authorities in two large U.S. cities giving the green light to contract awards that will eventually enable riders to pay their fares directly with contactless bank cards and NFC phones.