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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Visa is supporting another provisioning company, Sweden-based Fidesmo, to deliver and manage Visa-generated tokens to passive wearables, such as analog designer watches, keyrings and bracelets. The move, which follows Visa’s support in recent months for at least one other provisioning company serving an analog watchmaker, promises to expand use of payments wearables to more issuers, markets and devices.  

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight –  Given the poor financial results of U.S.-based Fit Pay, it’s becoming clear that the business case for provisioning of payment cards to wearable devices remains difficult.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Two more large Nordic banks, Nordea and Swedbank, have launched contactless payments on analog watches, using technology from Swedish provisioning company Fidesmo that enables consumers to buy the watches and provision them with tokenized Mastercard-branded cards after the sale by tapping the watches on Android NFC phones.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based Nxt-ID disclosed late Thursday that the spin-off of its payments unit, Fit Pay, which provides bank card provisioning for Garmin Pay, would again be delayed, as it waits another couple of weeks for the closing of a nearly $17 million loan it needs to move forward with the new company.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Small Swedish analog watchmaker TRIWA next week plans to launch payments wearables enabled for tokenized Mastercard-branded cards issued by Swedish banking group SEB, with provisioning company Fidesmo telling NFC Times there will be more watch brands to come enabling payments.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – In one of the first implementations of its kind, Sweden-based hybrid smartwatch brand Kronaby plans to enable personalization of tokenized payment cards over the air using a Bluetooth connection to what is essentially a passive contactless chip in its watches.