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France-based Inside Secure reported smaller operating losses for 2013, though mainly on an adjusted basis and wrote off $3.6 million in NFC controller chips it had on hand as it continues to exit the market for the chips.

Spanish bank Bankinter has announced it plans to launch its long-anticipated host-card emulation service commercially in the second or third quarter, following a security evaluation by a Germany-based lab.

NFC Times Exclusive: RBC Secure Cloud Explained:
As one of the first commercial launches of cloud-based open-loop payments using NFC, observers will be watching closely how well Royal Bank of Canada’s RBC Secure Cloud service does in the market.

Isis telco AT&T is making the first NFC-enabled cases for the iPhone available for use with the Isis Mobile Wallet this week, a move expected to be followed by Verizon Wireless soon.

NFC Times Exclusive: NFC ecosystem players are moving to simplify the costly and complex process for putting payment applications on secure elements, as they face mounting frustration at the pace of rollouts–and growing threats from such alternatives as host-card emulation.

NFC Times Exclusive: France’s Bouygues Telecom, a pioneer in the NFC ecosystem, has frozen its NFC program, just months before the French market plans to roll out the technology nationally, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Special Report, Part two:
Interest continues to run high in host-card emulation since Google announced it would support the technology in its new version of Android, but with few if any public pilots and no waivers or certifications yet granted by the major payment schemes, the technology has some maturing to do. 

China’s NFC market continues to gather steam, with No. 3 telco, China Telecom, announcing a nationwide launch Thursday and one of China’s largest commercial financial institutions, China Merchants Bank, introducing mobile payment on embedded chips in three Samsung 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.

NFC Times Exclusive: Vodafone Group today announced the launch of an NFC mobile-wallet and payments service in Spain and timetables for similar launches in four other European countries–all featuring Vodafone’s own co-branded prepaid payment application, SmartPass.

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.

France’s largest mobile operator, Orange, has concluded a deal with Visa to support its launch of Orange Cash in France, the latest mobile operator to announce plans to roll out its own branded prepaid payment service on NFC phones.