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NFC Times Exclusive Insight – LAS VEGAS, Nev.: In a surprise move, JPMorgan Chase, the largest U.S. credit and debit card issuer by payment volume, announced plans to launch its own wallet app–along with a low-cost mobile-payments service accepted by Wal-Mart Stores and other big U.S. merchants in the MCX merchant consortium.

NFC Times Exclusive: LAS VEGAS, Nev. – While a number of major U.S. merchants have pledged to only accept one mobile-payments service, that is not the case for giant Subway sandwich chain, which has now introduced at least three major options for its customers to pay with their smartphones.

NFC Times Exclusive: The NFC-enabled Apple Watch, Apple’s first smartwatch, may drive a significant increase in adoption for wearable devices, say analysts, although it remains to be seen whether that adoption will bring with it more mobile-payments applications for wearables.

NFC Times Exclusive: Proximity marketing firms in the U.S. and Europe say that their most successful campaigns see tens of thousands of taps or scans, but amid growing interest in Bluetooth low energy, they say that it is important not to over-use push advertising.

Visa Inc. announced Thursday it would launch a tokenization service in September, as part of what it calls its Visa Digital Solutions “suite of offerings.”

Amazon unveiled its first smartphone, the Fire, Wednesday and confirmed that the device will support NFC, but it mentioned no uses for the technology.

Taipei, TAIWAN – NFC Times Exclusive: Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest mobile operator and a long-time backer of NFC, has introduced its QR code-based mobile-payments service, with plans to pursue NFC and QR code mobile-payments in separate tracks.

National Australia Bank has introduced a peer-to-payment application, which enables customers to transfer funds, initiated by NFC or QR codes or by using a mobile number, email address or Facebook account.

NFC Times Exclusive: Payment transactions increased significantly for several merchants trialing a QR-code-based mobile-payment app from Barclaycard US when the merchants added offers, though overall take-up of the bPay app has been modest, according to interviews with merchants conducted by NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive Analysis: France-based Gemalto has set an ambitious goal of doubling its operating profits by 2017, and the ramping up of trusted service management business is key to hitting that objective.