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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Samsung today disclosed plans in a local forum to launch Samsung Pay in Taiwan next year with several banks and a closed-loop payments service, iPASS, which could be used for transit fare collection. The launch is expected around the first quarter.

NFC Times Exclusive – Payments company Square is preparing to make its Square Cash service available as a prepaid payment application for Apple Pay in the U.S., which would enable Square Cash money-transfer users to tap for purchases in stores, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – As global mobile wallet providers Google, Samsung and Microsoft race to deliver multichannel payments to stay on par with Apple, all three have chosen to add online payments to their mobile wallets by integrating with the digital platforms of one or both of the two largest U.S. payments networks, Visa and Mastercard.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight ­– Apple Pay launched Monday in Japan as Apple’s 12^th market for its mobile payments service and the first to support closed

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Google is trying to play catch up with Apple Pay and Samsung Pay by accelerating the international expansion of its mobile payments service, Android Pay, and has launched the service in a fourth market this year, Hong Kong.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight –  About 60% of Chinese consumers who have activated transit cards in their Xiaomi Mi Pay wallet phones in Shenzhen and Shanghai have topped up value on the cards at least twice–an indicator of use–Charles Dachs, NXP Semiconductors’ NFC chief, told NFC Times, noting that there are more rollouts of NFC transit ticketing to come in OEM Pay wallets in China.

NFC Times Exclusive – U.S.-based Citigroup plans to soon launch its own NFC-based mobile payments service, Citi Pay, in the U.S. and Asia, in part using technology from Mastercard, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Following the initial soft launch of its NFC payments service in its home base, Sweden-based Seamless Distribution, the parent company of the SEQR wallet, is enabling HCE for all European users as it seeks global acceptance of its proprietary mobile payments service.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight –  If a planned acquisition by Qualcomm of NXP Semiconductors, as reported, were to go through, it would not affect supplies of NFC chips to smartphone makers using other processor chips, said an expert.

NFC Times Exclusive –  In the first cases of its kind to come to light, two of Taiwan’s largest telcos are planning to support host card emulation in their wallets, as they seek to overcome problems with their joint TSM and to prepare for the coming of OEM Pay to Taiwan, expected in the first quarter of next year, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive – Czech banks are looking to capitalize on a growing contactless point-of-sale infrastructure in the country, with two of the five largest banks there having already launched HCE-based mobile payments and the others looking to join the market, NFC Times has learned.