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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

Mobile wallets now make up more than half of all contactless payments for Transport for New South Wales, Australia’s largest transit agency, the agency confirmed to Mobility Payments.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Citing the increased demand for cashless payments because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Westpac today became the last of Australia’s big four banks to adopt Apple Pay, ending a four-year holdout that had lasted months, even years longer than its major rivals.

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 – Another one of Australia’s big four banks, National Australia Bank, has given in to pressure from customers and has agreed to support Apple Pay.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – With Switzerland’s No. 2 bank, Credit Suisse, expected to participate in Apple Pay, the U.S.-based tech giant continues to chip away at resistance among major European banks to joining its digital payments service.

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 – With its capitulation last week to Apple and agreement to participate in the tech giant’s payments service, Australia’s largest financial institution, Commonwealth Bank–which had once vowed not to support Apple Pay–shows that Apple is making headway with major banks that had once resisted supporting the NFC wallet.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Transport for New South Wales, Australia–the transit authority that oversees trains, buses and ferries in and around Sydney–decided to roll out its open-loop payments service to all train services following an extensive trial.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Commonwealth Bank of Australia will support mobile payments with Fitbit Pay and the wearables maker’s forthcoming Ionic smartwatch, NFC Times has learned. That’s in addition to support for Garmin Pay and Android Pay, which the bank announced earlier this week; but the bank appears set to continue snubbing Apple Pay.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – As expected, Australian antitrust regulators shot down a request by four major banks for permission to bargain collectively with Apple to try to gain access to the tech giant’s NFC technology in its iPhones and to jointly boycott participation in Apple Pay during the negotiations.