NFC TimesThe premier source for news, analysis and commentary on
Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

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 –  France’s domestic debit scheme Cartes Bancaires has been gearing up for the past year to launch a tokenization service for French issuers, with commercial service expected in coming months, including in support of HCE apps launched by banks and possibly for “OEM Pay” services.

NFC Times Exclusive: The head of mobile payments for France-based mobile operator Orange Group said he wants to talk to Apple about enabling the telco’s co-branded payment application, Orange Cash, on the Apple Pay platform. 

NFC Times Exclusive: French mobile operators are delaying their nationwide rollout, citing interoperability problems among TSMs and SIMs provided by different vendors, among other issues, NFC Times has learned.

U.S.-based mobile-wallet provider C-SAM has hired Vincent Barnaud, the long-serving contactless services head at France Telecom-Orange group.

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.

BARCELONA – France Telecom-Orange has sold 500,000 NFC phones in France to date and is putting new models on sale at an increasing rate, said Thierry Millet, head of payments and contactless at Orange group.

While handset makers are beginning to ship more popular smartphone models with NFC inside, some key industry observers say they expect significantly fewer than 40 million NFC phones will be shipped for all of 2011.