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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – With the launch of Apple Pay imminent in France, telcos there are continuing to push SIM-based NFC technology, hiring a trusted service manager for their new NFC SIM “hub”–although No. 1 telco Orange will also support Apple Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive – French banks and their bank-owned domestic payments network STET plan to launch mobile payments in the first quarter of next year with a “large smartphone vendor” using the domestic payment network’s own token service provider, STET told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Microsoft, which has written off more than $8 billion from its failed Nokia acquisition and which is expected to fully pull the plug on its consumer smartphone hardware business, nonetheless believes a viable wallet app is a must-have to keep its Windows 10 operating system for phones viable–although its announcement this week of Microsoft Wallet is surrounded by unknowns, including exactly when the service will generally launch.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight - Samsung launched Samsung Pay in its fifth country, Australia, on Wednesday, but like Apple, Samsung has had to make do without the country's largest card issuers to begin with.

UPDATED: NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Following the launch of Samsung Pay in South Korea, the U.S., and China, Samsung’s launches of its mobile payments service in two new markets, Spain and Australia, both contactless and EMV payments hot spots, will not support the device maker's proprietary Magnetic Secure Transmission technology, which is designed to make nearly all mag-stripe POS terminals potential acceptance points, NFC Times has learned. But in Singapore, Samsung Pay is expected to support MST technology.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight –  Wells Fargo’s announcement this week that it plans to launch mobile payments from its own app this summer using host card emulation technology would make it the second major U.S. issuer to offer HCE-enabled service from its own Android app, following Capital One, though Wells Fargo plans to make the payments service part of its mobile-banking app.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – In an effort to deliver on the promise of a "true mobile wallet" and, of course, boost its flagging smartphone market share in China, Samsung has struck a deal with Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services to enable the Alipay QR code-based payments service in China through Samsung Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – On Track Innovations CEO Shlomi Cohen sought to reassure investors that the company he took over nine months ago is more competitive and is moving toward profitability, though he declines to predict when it will turn its first yearly profit since its founding in 1990.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – The issue over availability of tokenization services and whether the major global networks, such as Visa, are allowing for a level playing field among token service providers has reached Taiwan–with a former prime minister and chief banking regulator weighing in on the topic–as Taiwanese officials decide how best to expedite the arrival of such mobile payments services as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive insight – Yandex.Money, sometimes called the “Russian PayPal,” is using host card emulation for its new NFC-enabled payments service, a Yandex.Money representative told NFC Times. PayPal earlier told NFC Times it also plans to use HCE for its app in the U.S.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – ANZ is the first bank in Australia to launch with Apple Pay, with Apple able to crack into the big four banks, which had been balking at signing up for the payments service mainly because of Apple’s demands for transaction fees.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight –  It is perhaps a measure of just how big of a hit SIM suppliers took from the closing of the Softcard wallet in the U.S. early last year that their SIMalliance vendor trade group is refusing to release NFC SIM shipment figures publicly for either the North American market or globally for 2015.