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

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – TAIPEI, Taiwan: Apple launched its mobile payments service in Taiwan today, before the end of the month as expected, as the tech giant expands Apple Pay to its 15^th market globally.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Samsung has expanded its mobile payments service to India, where Samsung Pay will integrate a QR code-based mobile wallet service, along with conventional NFC bank card payments and Samsung’s proprietary mobile mag-stripe payments technology, MST.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Unlike at least some other major networks, including Mastercard, Visa has shown no intention of allowing third-party token service providers to tokenize Visa-branded cards, requiring nearly all issuers to use Visa’s own Visa Token Service, or VTS, sources told NFC Times.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Japan’s Sony Corp. is supporting host card emulation with its proprietary FeliCa contactless technology, which could enable service providers to avoid the need for secure elements in rolling out FeliCa-based applications on NFC phones.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Two of the largest banks in Belgium have launched, or are planning to launch, HCE-based mobile payments but chose different approaches: BNP Paribas Fortis decided to first launch with Android Pay, while state-owned Belfius Bank plans to enable the service within its mobile-banking app.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple has expanded its mobile payments service to another small market, with its launch Tuesday in Ireland, but is preparing to launch in a much larger market, Italy.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Australia’s largest domestic debit network, eftpos, plans to launch its overdue tokenization service commercially by the second quarter, likely serving at least one of the country’s big four banks for its HCE mobile wallet and one or more of the “Pays” wallets, such as Android Pay and possibly Apple Pay, NFC Times has learned.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – While the base of contactless point-of-sale terminals in the U.S. has grown substantially over the past two and a half years, some of the country’s largest merchants continue to resist the idea of accepting such NFC wallets as Apple Pay and Android Pay.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Despite the resurgence in demand for NFC technology with the launch of Apple Pay in 2014, followed by other NFC-enabled “Pays” wallets and the separate rollout of HCE technology by Google, use of QR codes for mobile payments continues to grow in popularity globally.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Switzerland-based payments software company Netcetera acquired longtime NFC technology supplier Nexperts of Austria to deliver a multich

NFC TIMES Exclusive – The rollout of payments wearables is hitting a snag, with commercial and technical challenges holding back plans by industry players to enable consumers to buy wristbands, analog watches, rings and other wearables and then load them with their favorite debit and credit cards. (See table, challenge sections, below.)

NFC Times Exclusive – The coming year will see the major networks continuing to dominate tokenization, even though at least a few more domestic payments schemes will begin tokenizing cards.