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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive Insight ­– Apple Pay launched Monday in Japan as Apple’s 12^th market for its mobile payments service and the first to support closed

NFC Times Exclusive – The planned launch of NFC transit ticketing in Japan next month with Apple Pay shined the spotlight on the emergence of closed-loop NFC transit ticketing–which has been seen as a prime application for NFC phones but one that has disappointed NFC backers for years.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – With the launch of Apple Pay imminent in France, telcos there are continuing to push SIM-based NFC technology, hiring a trusted service manager for their new NFC SIM “hub”–although No. 1 telco Orange will also support Apple Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive – Alliance Digital Technology Co., the joint venture of five Taiwanese mobile operators and transit fare-collection operator EasyCard Corp., is steering away from the TSM business, which was the reason it formed three years ago, NFC Times has learned. It will add a focus on providing mobile ID and authentication, the JV told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Samsung is hiring established TSM vendors to assist with the provisioning and secure element management for its forthcoming Samsung Pay service, at least in some markets, sources told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive – Oberthur Technologies, the No. 2 smart card vendor globally and a major bank card and SIM supplier, had flat sales in 2014, blamed mainly on lower revenue in its telecom business unit from falling prices for lower-end SIM cards, slow sales of NFC SIMs and a hiatus in its contract to supply embedded chips to Samsung.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Gemalto CEO Olivier Piou said revenue from the vendor’s trusted service management business fell in the first quarter and would stay down for the rest of the year, while indicating Gemalto is no longer seeing many TSM tenders from telcos.

NFC Times Exclusive – Falling SIM card prices among other challenges have forced such major smart card and NFC vendors as Giesecke & Devrient and Oberthur Technologies to restructure, though strong growth in shipments of EMV cards to Asia and the United States helped them record growth in overall revenue in 2014.

NFC Times Exclusive – Samsung’s NFC payments platform, Samsung Pay, is due to launch in the summer in the U.S. and South Korea. But it’s not the only payments service planned for Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S6.

NFC Times Exclusive – Is the TSM, as we know it, dying? Predictably, the three major global trusted service managers say no.