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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based sports and entertainment ticketing vendor Ticketmaster sees its new digital-ticketing technology–supporting bar codes and NFC–as a way to reduce fraud and stay in touch with both ticket purchasers and event attendees.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Singapore’s Land Transport Authority announced today it will begin accepting Visa-branded contactless cards to pay fares on trains and buses starting June 6, only two months after it launched its “SimplyGo” open-loop fare collection service with only Mastercard-branded cards.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – The Rio de Janeiro Metro has launched its planned open-loop payments service, one of the first Latin American transit systems to accept bank cards–in this case, Visa credit cards­–directly for payment of rides.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – With U.S. banks finally beginning to issue dual-interface EMV cards in significant numbers this year and more U.S. merchants accepting contactless and NFC payments, a key question becomes whether contactless card payment will help or hurt the prospects for what has generally been considered as disappointing take-up of NFC wallets.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Contactless transactions in Canada topped 50% of all in-store card transactions for the first time ever during the first quarter of this year, said the country’s largest payments card processor, Moneris, this week.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Samsung Pay is the first of the major NFC Pays wallets to announce it is working with Taiwan’s large closed-loop transit and retail payments service EasyCard, as it seeks to differentiate itself in a crowded and fast-growing mobile-payments market on the island nation.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – While Australia is the top market worldwide for use of contactless bank cards at retail, any hopes for those same open-loop cards and card credentials on NFC phones being used as part of a nationwide, interoperable transit payments service have been dashed for now. 

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based Nxt-ID, whose Fit Pay unit provides payment card provisioning for Garmin Pay, has announced a closing date for a $16.5 million loan it will use for working capital and to refinance an existing loan.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – When it launches its SimplyGo service April 4, Singapore’s Land Transport Authority will become the first major transit authority in Asia outside of China to launch acceptance of open-loop payments of fares.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – The developer of Visa’s new transit secure-access module, or SAM, said the technology could potentially help turn even a low-end, closed-loop transit-ticketing system, such as Mifare Classic, into an EMV-enabled payments system–although that could still require transit operators to install new acceptance terminals, and they would still need to set up a back-end system to support it.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – While Apple’s deal with Goldman Sachs to jointly roll out a new credit card this year integrated with Apple Pay and Apple’s devices made headlines Thursday, it was neither the first news of this partnership nor the first deal of its kind for Apple.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – ­The Heathrow Express airport line serving London will begin accepting contactless open-loop payments along with closed-loop Oyster cards next week–more than six years after commuters first could pay by tapping their bank cards and NFC phones to ride on buses on the separate Transport for London system.