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NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – While the rollout hasn’t gone quite as smoothly as planned, the Shanghai Metro’s launch of a large trial of QR code-based payments could mark a turning point for use of the technology for transit fare collection.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Mastercard has announced it will support QR code-based payments in Taiwan starting next year, working with the country’s largest credit card acquirer and processor and also Taiwan’s nascent domestic debit card network.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Major payments networks, including Visa, Mastercard and China UnionPay, have released global specifications for QR code-based payments through their EMVCo joint venture because they see an opportunity to capture more transactions–and also a risk of losing transactions if they don’t support the technology globally.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Visa says it plans to support QR code-based mobile payments late next year in Taiwan–a market where all three major “Pays” wallets have launched supporting Visa-branded cards with NFC.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Samsung has expanded its mobile payments service to India, where Samsung Pay will integrate a QR code-based mobile wallet service, along with conventional NFC bank card payments and Samsung’s proprietary mobile mag-stripe payments technology, MST.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Despite the resurgence in demand for NFC technology with the launch of Apple Pay in 2014, followed by other NFC-enabled “Pays” wallets and the separate rollout of HCE technology by Google, use of QR codes for mobile payments continues to grow in popularity globally.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – In case anyone is still wondering, Apple didn’t launch Apple Pay for the transaction fees it earns from banks, even if the iPhone maker still doesn’t publicly acknowledge it charges the fees to begin with.

NFC Times Exclusive – Apple’s expansion into Switzerland late last week with its Apple Pay service followed a familiar pattern, as in many of the other new markets the tech giant has expanded its payments service in: support first comes from relatively small issuers while major banks hold out.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – In an effort to deliver on the promise of a "true mobile wallet" and, of course, boost its flagging smartphone market share in China, Samsung has struck a deal with Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial Services to enable the Alipay QR code-based payments service in China through Samsung Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – While Chase Pay will offer merchants in the MCX consortium a potential consumer base of 94 million Chase payment card accounts and the promise of integration with their loyalty programs and offers, the essential element of the deal was the very low transaction fees Chase will charge.