NFC Times Exclusive – When United Overseas Bank in Singapore launched its mobile wallet app with host card emulation, UOB Mighty, in November of 2015, it was the first bank outside of the U.S. to use the Visa Token Service, Visa’s on-behalf-of tokenization service.
UPDATE: But UOB, one of Singapore’s largest banks and card issuers, had already begun to work with a vendor to set up its own token service provider. That bank-owned TSP is operational now. But NFC Times has learned that Visa is blocking the bank from using it to tokenize its Visa-branded cards for Apple Pay, which launched in Singapore last spring. Visa cards make up around 70% of UOB’s more than 2 million cards on issue.
Instead, Visa is insisting that the bank use Visa Token Service for its cards for Apple Pay, sources said. The bank, in a short statement, told NFC Times it is able to use its own token service provider to tokenize Visa-branded cards for its UOB Mighty app, but it would not comment on whether Visa is allowing it to tokenize Visa-branded cards the bank makes available for Apple Pay. END UPDATE. UOB is believed to have already paid for the tokenization platform it bought from the third-party vendor.
