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NFC TIMES Exclusive – Mastercard has opened up tokenization of Mastercard-branded card accounts to two other major payments industry players, First Data and PayPal, enabling them to tokenize Mastercard-branded cards for mobile and other digital payments services as an alternative to Mastercard’s own token service, MDES, NFC Times has learned.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Some of the largest banks in the U.S. have been pressing Visa to allow them to tokenize their Visa-branded cards for mobile payments through a token service provider set up by their trade group, The Clearing House, which is owned by such major U.S. issuers as JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One and Bank of America, NFC Times has learned.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – TAIPEI, Taiwan: A number of Taiwanese banks plan to enable customers to load their debit card credentials into an HCE-enabled mobile wallet app starting this month, following the launch last year by the banks of HCE-enabled credit card payments, NFC Times has learned.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – While Visa has said it is waiving tokenization fees for issuers that join its commercial tokenization hub, VDEP, and use its Visa Token Service, some observers believe the network will charge the fees sooner or later.

NFC Times Exclusive – When United Overseas Bank in Singapore launched its mobile wallet app with host card emulation, UOB Mighty, in November of 2015, it was the first bank outside of the U.S. to use the Visa Token Service, Visa’s on-behalf-of tokenization service.

NFC Times Exclusive – Both Visa and Mastercard have set deadlines for ending support for alternate PANs that a number of banks are issuing for their mobile payments apps, as the schemes continue to push their own tokenization services to issuers, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive – Fourteen banks in Taiwan launched mobile payments using host card emulation late last week or plan to do so in coming weeks, but none of the cards that the banks’ customers can load into their new Android wallet apps will sport the Visa logo–one of the two main bank card brands in Taiwan. 

NFC Times Exclusive Insight –  TAIPEI, Taiwan: More than a dozen Taiwanese banks and their mobile payments joint venture along with Mastercard plan to announce Thursday the launch of mobile payments using host card emulation, with more banks to follow.

NFC Times Exclusive – French banks and their bank-owned domestic payments network STET plan to launch mobile payments in the first quarter of next year with a “large smartphone vendor” using the domestic payment network’s own token service provider, STET told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive – More than two years after EMVCo released its tokenization guidelines, there are still few token service providers operating besides those of the major payments networks, and there are no specifications yet from top networks Visa and MasterCard to help vendors to tokenize cards supporting their brands.