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

NFC TIMES Exclusive –  Big U.S. acquirer and processor First Data plans to generate its own tokens for Mastercard-branded card accounts next year, NFC Times has learned, and a source says First Data is also in discussions with Visa to do the same, but Visa may not allow the processor to tokenize Visa-branded cards in place of the network’s own Visa Token Service.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Unattended point-of-sale vendor USA Technologies expects to close its $85 million deal to acquire competitor Cantaloupe Systems next week, telling NFC Times the deal will add to USAT’s suite of services and expand its international reach.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – TAIPEI, Taiwan: Japanese credit card company JCB will participate early next year in a mobile wallet from the Taiwan Mobile Payment banking joint venture, marking the first time JCB will support host card emulation in a mobile payments service.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority board has approved a long-anticipated contract to enable riders to pay with contactless credit and debit cards, including cards loaded into NFC mobile wallets, by 2019–the largest transit authority to do so since Transport for London launched open-loop fare collection in late 2012.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Major League Baseball in the U.S. may roll out NFC mobile ticketing next year as part of Apple Pay, although it’s unclear how many stadiums or other venues would be involved, sources told NFC Times.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – The Clearing House, a group of the largest banks in the U.S., announced its first plans to tokenize cards branded by a major network, as the banks seek to reduce their dependence on tokenization by the major card schemes.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Mobile payments are one of the key factors driving the gradual replacement of cash with card and digital payments, according to the annual World Payments Report released this week by consulting and IT services firm Capgemini and major French bank BNP Paribas.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Wells Fargo, the third largest U.S. bank by assets, made good on its pledge last March to launch NFC-enabled ATM cash withdrawals by the end of this year, although that is one year behind schedule, and Wells Fargo is far from the first major bank globally to support the technology on ATMs, even in the U.S.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – China UnionPay and the Guangzhou Metro have announced the transit company will accept UnionPay-branded contactless credit cards and bank cards loaded into the Apple Wallet, the first such Chinese city to support open-loop fare collection.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Despite large rollouts of NFC or related technologies in such developed Asia-Pacific markets as Japan, Australia and New Zealand, use of mobile phones for purchases in emerging markets in the region far outstrips those in developed markets, a Mastercard mobile shopping survey found.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Mastercard has released its list of “partners” or certified vendors that it hopes will help the network roll out its key digital payments products, the Masterpass wallet and tokenization from the Mastercard Digital Enablement Service, or MDES. (See table below.)

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight ­– In what may be a response to the proposed tie-up between Qualcomm and NXP Semiconductors, STMicroelectronics has announced that it is “cooperating” with Taiwan-based MediaTek, the No. 2 supplier of processor chips for smartphones, to integrate its NFC technology into MediaTek reference designs.