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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive – A spokesman for four major Australian banks battling Apple for access to NFC technology on its iPhones shot back at Apple's latest filing with Australian competition officials, denying that the banks are trying to avoid paying fees to Apple to participate in the payments service, the spokesman told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Australia’s largest domestic debit network, eftpos, told NFC Times the network’s planned tokenization service would launch on time and contends the service would not struggle against Visa and MasterCard if those major networks launched their “free” tokenization services in Australia.

UPDATED: NFC Times Exclusive – Australian credit union CUA has seen a 16% increase in value of transactions for mobile payments since the launch of its host-card emulation mobile-payments app last summer, though user numbers have remained small 11 months after one of the first HCE commercial launches globally.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Australia’s AMP Bank said it chose to launch mobile-payments with host-card emulation over other NFC technologies because of the “wider reach” the technology offers, since it’s “available to all NFC-enabled Android mobile phones running KitKat or later,” the bank’s director digital, Michael Weeding, told NFC Times.

Westpac New Zealand has announced a small trial of host-card emulation-based payments, with plans to introduce the technology to customers early next year.

Customers of Australia’s largest credit union, CUA. can make payments by downloading an HCE-enabled app from the Google Play store to their Android KitKat-ready NFC handsets.