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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive – Both Apple and Transport for London are trumpeting the coming use of Apple Pay to pay fares on various modes of mass transit in London, including the fast-paced London Underground. But they face a couple of problems.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple today announced major new updates to Apple Pay, including the addition of store credit, debit and loyalty cards in the U.S., expansion of the mobile-payments service to its first overseas market, the UK, and a renaming of the wallet app itself from Passbook to Wallet.

MELBOURNE, SYDNEY, Australia – NFC Times Exclusive: On the face of it, Australia would seem like an ideal market for Apple to expand its Apple Pay service outside of the U.S. After all, iPhone market share here now hovers around 40%, usage rates of contactless payment at retail are the highest in the world and major banks are eager to roll out mobile payment.

MELBOURNE, Australia – NFC Times Exclusive: U.S. retail electronics chain RadioShack is seeing 10% of its transactions from Apple Pay in its stores equipped with contactless readers, Michael Carper, CIO for the financially troubled retailer said.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Payment network Discover Financial Services announced its support for Apple Pay on Monday, becoming the fourth major payment networks in the U.S. to join Apple Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – With the first Apple Watch units set to be delivered this week, NFC payments for wearable devices becomes a budding market, though it remains to be seen whether consumers want to tap their watches or wristbands to pay.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight –Apple is getting some pushback from banks as it seeks to expand its payments service, Apple Pay, outside of the U.S., where its U.S. business model along with other characteristics of the U.S. market will not translate well, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple’s new wearable, Apple Watch, will support Apple Pay as well as mobile keys for hotel rooms, the company announced Monday.

Sales in NXP Semiconductor’s emerging ID business, which mainly includes its NFC chips, soared in the fourth quarter, growing by more than 200%, compared with the same period a year earlier, thanks mainly to the roll out of Apple Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive – An announcement Tuesday by USA Technologies of a “nationwide rollout of (200,000) new acceptance points for Apple Pay” was merely a show of support for Apple's new payments platform, not a new deployment or upgrade to existing equipment, NFC Times has learned, and the vendor’s unattended point-of-sale terminals will continue to accept other forms of NFC and contactless payments.