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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

MELBOURNE, SYDNEY, Australia – NFC Times Exclusive: On the face of it, Australia would seem like an ideal market for Apple to expand its Apple Pay service outside of the U.S. After all, iPhone market share here now hovers around 40%, usage rates of contactless payment at retail are the highest in the world and major banks are eager to roll out mobile payment.

UPDATED: NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Relatively little noticed amid the widespread coverage of Google’s unveiling of its new Android Pay platform last week are the continued tokenization plays by major payment networks, Visa and MasterCard Worldwide, including Visa’s announcement of a new tokenization program and pricing policies, geared toward such platforms as Android Pay. 

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Google announced its much-anticipated response to Apple Pay, with an updated host-card-emulation-based payments platform, Android Pay, that will incorporate tokenization,  fingerprint biometrics and in-app payments, in addition to in-store tapping to pay. 

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 Times Exclusive – Samsung’s NFC payments platform, Samsung Pay, is due to launch in the summer in the U.S. and South Korea. But it’s not the only payments service planned for Samsung’s new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S6.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Vodafone Group is relaunching its NFC-based Vodafone Wallet with tokenized payment applications, as it seeks to attract more users and issuers to the mobile wallet.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Germany-based Giesecke & Devrient confirmed it is providing the host-card emulation technology for Commonwealth Bank’s commercial HCE launch this month of Tap & Pay from the bank’s Android-based mobile-banking app.

NFC Times Exclusive – The public relations debacle Gemalto faced following revelations last month that U.S. and UK spy agencies had stolen keys from its SIM cards is not the only problem the France-based vendor has had to deal with regarding SIMs.

NFC Times Exclusive – MasterCard Worldwide has named James Anderson group executive for platforms, a key position inside the payment network, which is seeking to secure its role in the ecosystem as mobile payments start to gather steam, NFC Times has learned.

NFC Times Exclusive – With tokenization scaling up, some players in the payments ecosystem will see financial benefit, while others will pay the cost of implementing the technology.