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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

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 – 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.

Continuing its habit of demonstrating NFC payments at high-profile sporting events, Visa has organized a mobile-payments trial with Banco de Brasil and Brazilian telco Oi to coincide with the World Cup.

Mobile operator TIM Brasil and Banco Bradesco have disclosed plans for an NFC trial that they say would enable users to pay for purchases at contactless point-of-sale terminals by tapping their Motorola or LG Electronics NFC phones, with the funds deducted from their debit accounts.

A MasterCard NFC payment pilot in Brazil, launched last week with Itaú bank, mobile operator TIM Brasil, point-of-sale terminal supplier Redecard, and France-based Gemalto, is expected to lead to a full rollout of mobile PayPass services in Brazil.

The 10-year anniversary of the official birth of NFC came and went quietly on Sept. 5, 2012.

Brazilian online payments company PagSeguro along with Nokia has launched an NFC peer-to-peer payment service enabling users to pay small merchants and transfer money to friends using Nokia smartphones.