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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

Large Spanish retail bank CaxiaBank has announced plans to launch NFC payments with the country’s three largest mobile operators, in what the bank bills as a first of its kind NFC project for Europe.

China UnionPay has announced that 15 banks now have access to its TSM platform, while a total of 30 banks have signed a cooperation agreement to eventually use the platform.

Canada-based coffee and fast-food chain Tim Hortons has launched what is believed to be the first full commercial NFC mobile-payments service using host-card emulation.

NFC Times Exclusive: MasterCard Worldwide has moved forward with its deal with Samsung Electronics to enable its PayPass application on embedded chips in Samsung NFC phones, NFC Times has learned.

Israel-based NFC and contactless technology supplier On Track Innovations reported revenue for the third quarter increased by 27% to $6.8 million, driven by a more than doubling in sales of such payments products as contactless readers of point-of-sale terminals in the U.S. and expansion of equipment for transit-ticketing in Poland.

NFC Times Exclusive: With Broadcom scoring an unexpected design win to supply NFC chips to Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S4 earlier this year, and the U.S.-based chip maker gaining an endorsement from Google for its NFC technology, it looked like Broadcom could dethrone rival NXP Technologies as the premier supplier for Android NFC devices.

NFC Times Exclusive: As Canada’s NFC infrastructure continues to grow, two NFC mobile wallets, one from a mobile carrier, the other from a partnership between two financial institutions, will launch in Canada over the next few months.

Smart card vendor association Eurosmart today confirmed its earlier projection that industry suppliers would ship at least 250 million secure elements for NFC devices in 2013, and predicted shipments would grow by 64% next year to 435 million units.

Identive will sell its Tagtrail platform for tag campaign management, but the company says NFC tags remain a core part of its business.

NFC Times Exclusive: U.S.-based Sprint sees its NFC-based Pinsight Touch platform as the missing piece of its year-old targeted advertising platform, bringing payments and other secure applications to the service.

Identive Group showed higher revenue in the third quarter, thanks to a jump in NFC and RFID sales, but took a large impairment charge and will sell some “noncore assets,” as its share price continues to hover around historic lows.

NFC Times Special Report, Part One: In a move with potentially far-reaching implications for the NFC industry, Google has built support for host-card emulation into its new Android operating system, which could enable payments and other “secure” applications without a secure element.