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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

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 – While a well-developed contactless card and POS terminal infrastructure and strong consumer take-up of contactless card payments has often been touted as the gateway to use of mobile payments, that is often not the case. Take Canada, for instance.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – By switching from NFC SIM-based to host card emulation mobile payments service at the end of November, one of Canada's top five banks, Scotiabank, is hoping to “build adoption” at a “higher magnitude” for its My Mobile Wallet service, a bank spokeswoman told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive – American Express has quietly launched its HCE-enabled mobile payments service in the UK, along with its launch in Canada, which it announced Wednesday, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – One of Canada’s big five banks, CIBC, launched Samsung Pay this week, making its Visa-branded credit cards available as part of an “early-access” launch that Samsung itself hasn’t yet announced.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Telco joint ventures on opposite sides of the globe announced within hours of each other plans to pull the plug on their respective NFC wallets, marking another big hit for the future of SIM-based NFC.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple has cracked the big five banks in Canada, with two of the country’s largest banks, including Royal Bank of Canada, today announcing they are participating in Apple Pay, with the three others to follow.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Toronto-Dominion Bank, one of Canada’s largest banks, is the first in the country to adopt Visa's tokenization technology and the third outside the U.S. that have been announced so far using the payment scheme’s tokenization service.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple’s announcement of its expansion of Apple Pay to five more markets, including Australia and Canada this year, with only one major issuer– American Express–underscores the problems the tech giant is having in signing up banks for the overseas expansion of its mobile-payments service.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – The head of the Canadian telco joint venture Suretap Wallet told NFC Times that this week’s launch of the telco’s new wallet service was not prompted by the expected expansion of Apple Pay into Canada later this year.