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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – As NFC Times reported a month ago, U.S.-based Citigroup is the latest bank with plans to launch an HCE-enabled mobile wallet for Android phones, “Citi Pay,” which will launch in Asia-Pacific first then in the U.S., using Masterpass technology.

NFC Times Exclusive – U.S.-based Citigroup plans to soon launch its own NFC-based mobile payments service, Citi Pay, in the U.S. and Asia, in part using technology from Mastercard, NFC Times has learned.

U.S.-based Vivotech is moving closer to liquidation, with the NFC company confirming that it recently entered into an assignment for the benefit of creditors agreement, a process by which the company’s assets would be sold to pay creditors.

Google Wallet product manager Robin Dua said the company expects more payment card issuers to soon announce support for the wallet–enabling their customers to easily add their cards to the NFC-enabled cloud-based wallet.

2012 was going to be the year that the new era of NFC-based mobile commerce had finally arrived–with Google Wallet rolling out widely, mobile operators in the U.S. and Europe making significant inroads with their own mobile wallets and big Asian m-commerce players generally commercializing NFC, as well.

Dickson Chu, who headed the Google Wallet program at U.S.-based Citigroup, has left the bank to take a newly created post as senior vice president for merchant solutions at daily deal site LivingSocial.

Citigroup’s Dickson Chu, who is leading Citi’s participation in the Google Wallet, says the bank understands its role in the coming era of mobile commerce.

Google has unveiled its NFC Google Wallet, which the Web giant hopes will usher in a "new era of commerce," using its Nexus S handset and, later, other Android NFC devices.

Google has confirmed it will be making a “partner announcement” concerning its NFC mobile-commerce initiative, which will be held tomorrow in New York.

An announcement by Citigroup and MasterCard Worldwide with Google of an NFC-based payment service is expected by the end of the week, sources told NFC Times.