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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple has continued to expand its NFC payments service, today launching Apple Pay in Spain, with participation from one of the country’s biggest banks, Banco Santander, and two payments networks, Mastercard and American Express.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Cardless ATM transactions are little more than a novelty now, but momentum is building, with three major U.S. banks, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo having announced or disclosed plans to enable customers to withdraw cash using their mobile phones. That may include support for such NFC mobile wallets as Apple Pay for at least some of the ATMs.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – CaixaBank is the first in Europe to announce it has signed up to participate in Samsung Pay, leading an expansion of the mobile payments service to Spain.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – CaixaBank, Spain’s large savings bank and one of the most important early adopters globally among financial institutions of SIM-based NFC payments, has introduced a mobile-payments app based on host card emulation.

NFC Times Exclusive – While the NFC industry saw a breakthrough in 2014 with the launch of Apple Pay, the year also was marked by a number of disappointments and missed opportunities.

NFC Times Exclusive: The NFC-enabled Apple Watch, Apple’s first smartwatch, may drive a significant increase in adoption for wearable devices, say analysts, although it remains to be seen whether that adoption will bring with it more mobile-payments applications for wearables.

NFC Times Exclusive: Host-card emulation represents an “inflection point” for driving the rollout of NFC mobile payments and could also help the SIM-based NFC ecosystem to become more efficient and less costly, the head of payments innovation for major Spanish bank BBVA told NFC Times.

Spanish bank BBVA is claiming to be the first bank to commercially launch payments with host-card emulation, announcing today an upgrade of its Android mobile-wallet app incorporating Visa’s HCE specifications.

NFC Times Exclusive: While continuing to support their applications on secure elements in NFC phones, Visa and MasterCard Worldwide confirmed their firm support for host-card emulation the past week, as they continue to fast-track new HCE specifications to the market.

Large Spanish department store chain El Corte Inglés has deployed 5,200 contactless terminals in its stores, the company announced on Tuesday, adding more momentum to one of Europe’s top contactless markets.