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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Transit officials in Miami-Dade County, Fla. are the latest in the U.S. to introduce open-loop payments of fares with contactless credit and debit cards and bank card credentials on NFC wallets, launching the service yesterday on the city's relatively small metro network, with plans to expand to buses later.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – When New York City transit officials announced Tuesday that the 1 millionth ride paid for through their new OMNY open-loop payments service had arrived ahead of schedule, they also proudly noted that 80% of the contactless payments had come from NFC wallets, not physical bank cards. 

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – As Apple Pay approaches the fifth anniversary of its launch in the U.S., there is more research showing that most American consumers simply don’t see the value of tapping to pay with NFC-based payments services. 

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – While noting to financial analysts late Tuesday that Apple Pay is now approaching 1 billion transactions per month globally and is in 47 markets, perhaps Apple CEO Tim Cook’s most significant comments about Apple Pay this week was to again emphasize that Apple wants to enable users to routinely tap to pay for bus, subway and other transit rides with their iPhones and Apple Watches. 

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Transport for New South Wales, Australia, the authority that oversees transit in and around Sydney, has taken a step toward phasing out its closed-loop contactless Opal fare card, today extending nearly all of the discounts it offers on Opal to users of open-loop Visa- Mastercard- and American Express-branded contactless cards.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Following Apple’s imminent entry into the credit card business in the U.S. with its planned Apple Card, the tech giant is showing signs it is looking to roll out the branded credit card in a number of other countries, as well.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight –  Apple Pay will offer support for Hong Kong’s popular closed-loop contactless transit and retail payments card Octopus later this year, adding a much-needed service to an Apple Wallet that launched three years ago in Hong Kong for credit and debit payments at retail.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – The mid-tier city of Vinnytsia in the Ukraine is rolling out its first transit smart cards for payment of fares on buses and trams this summer, replacing cash, which riders have used for years.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Two more large Nordic banks, Nordea and Swedbank, have launched contactless payments on analog watches, using technology from Swedish provisioning company Fidesmo that enables consumers to buy the watches and provision them with tokenized Mastercard-branded cards after the sale by tapping the watches on Android NFC phones.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Visa plans to buy the payments and ticketing unit of U.S.-based chip company Rambus for $75 million, as the payments network seeks to expand tokenization beyond Visa cards, including to bank accounts used for real-time payments, as well as to transactions processed by domestic networks.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Following a successful launch of its closed-loop Mifare-based transit payments service, myki, with Google Pay, Melbourne, Australia, transit authority Public Transport Victoria has allocated AU$1 million to expand the service onto other smartphone platforms, including iOS and the iPhone, an agency spokeswoman confirmed to NFC Times.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – While open-loop transit payments services, such as one being launched this week by New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, get most of the attention, most public transit agencies and operators do not plan to accept credit and debit cards directly for payment of fares anytime soon.