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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – As expected, Orange will continue offering its NFC-enabled Orange Cash Visa-branded card with the launch of its Orange Bank mobile service.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Deutsche Telekom, one of the most important backers of SIM-based NFC through the years, now questions whether the technology could ever become a standard, as it quietly withdrew its little-used SIM-based NFC mobile wallet from the German market last week after more than two years.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple, as expected, will bring its payments service to e-commerce purchases and to three new markets–France, Switzerland and Hong Kong–the tech giant announced during its Worldwide Developers Conference Monday.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Orange in Spain is the latest telco to announce the launch of a co-branded mobile-payments service using SIM cards and NFC phones, one of about 15 or so operators to launch globally so far. But it remains to be seen how many more will follow suit.

NFC ecosystem players are moving to simplify the costly and complex process for putting payment applications on secure elements, as they face mounting frustration at the pace of rollouts–and growing threats from such alternatives as host-card emulation.

NFC Times Exclusive: France’s Bouygues Telecom, a pioneer in the NFC ecosystem, has frozen its NFC program, just months before the French market plans to roll out the technology nationally, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive: As 2014 unfolds, the NFC ecosystem appears as unsettled as ever, with embedded secure chips expected to compete with NFC SIMs in several markets to store applications, and Google throwing its weight behind an alternative that could eventually enable service providers to avoid secure elements altogether.

Chris Bierbaum, who played a role in early development of the U.S. telco joint venture that would become Isis, has left Sprint as head of mobile commerce to lead mobile initiatives globally for UK-based directories and Internet services company hibü.

Mobile operator France Telecom-Orange has launched an NFC awards contest for developers, seeking to spur developers to create innovative NFC applications for the French market. 

France Telecom-Orange and China Mobile, the largest mobile operators in their respective home markets, have signed a memo of understanding to work together to speed the commercialization of NFC SIM cards.