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NFC Times Exclusive – With the role of the TSM coming under increasing pressure for being too complex and costly, Gemalto, the world’s largest TSM, is seeking to reposition its TSM offer–promoting it as being part of a large “trusted services hub,” as the France-based vendor tries to convince more banks to provision their credit and debit cards on NFC SIMs.

Apple’s new tablets, the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, unveiled today, will support the Touch ID fingerprint sensor to enable users to make purchases in apps with Apple Pay, but not in stores with NFC.

Gemalto reported flat revenue and a drop in profit for the first half of 2014, though noted that sales for its TSM and NFC SIM business were strong, and its EMV card business in the U.S. was ramping up.

France-based Gemalto has announced plans to acquire U.S.-based data security firm SafeNet in a cash and debt deal worth $890 million, its biggest acquisition since Gemalto was created in 2006 with the merger of what was then the two largest smart card companies, Gemplus and Axalto.

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.

Taiwanese mobile operators have sold a combined 4.2 million NFC-enabled phones and hope to launch their joint TSM platform by the end of the year.

France-based Gemalto today announced that it is one of the suppliers for China Telecom’s “massive” rollout of NFC SIMs, though it did not offer any details on price or quantities of cards it will ship.

AUSTIN, Texas – U.S. mobile carrier AT&T plans to enable nonpayment NFC services, which could run alongside payment applications on its NFC SIMs, but would not be part of the Isis Wallet.

NFC Times Exclusive: Chinese mobile operators China Mobile and China Telecom have begun ordering what is expected to be tens of millions of low-cost NFC SIM cards this year, as they prepare to expand their NFC rollouts, while China Mobile is also planning to pay device makers to put NFC technology in their phones, sources told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive: A mobile-payments joint venture in Taiwan led by banking groups has chosen a trusted service manager, which could act as an aggregation service for a number of large and small banks in the country wanting to provision their applications on NFC phones, NFC Times has learned.