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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – With the launch of Apple Pay imminent in France, telcos there are continuing to push SIM-based NFC technology, hiring a trusted service manager for their new NFC SIM “hub”–although No. 1 telco Orange will also support Apple Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive – With the role of the TSM coming under increasing pressure for being too complex and costly, Gemalto, the world’s largest TSM, is seeking to reposition its TSM offer–promoting it as being part of a large “trusted services hub,” as the France-based vendor tries to convince more banks to provision their credit and debit cards on NFC SIMs.

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: With interest in host-card emulation continuing to grow and SIM-based NFC rollouts in need of a boost, mobile operators and their global trade association, GSMA, are pushing for significant cuts in the cost and complexity of TSMs and lowering other hurdles that have discouraged service providers from provisioning their applications on SIM cards.

AUSTIN, Texas – The Isis joint venture will offer a TSM service to banks, which Isis says would enable the issuers to avoid hiring their own trusted service managers to download and manage their applications for the Isis Wallet.

NFC Times Exclusive: Tenders are due tomorrow from vendors in response to a request for proposal for Taiwan’s second planned centralized trusted service management platform–this one from Taiwanese banking groups, which formed a mobile-payments joint venture late last month.

BARCELONA, Spain – MasterCard Worldwide is seeking to expand its little-used service provider TSM aggregation service from Poland to Germany, planning to announce a deal to connect a TSM platform to three major German telcos.

Gemalto today announced a contract, awarded last year, to supply a TSM platform to Hong Kong ATM and interbank group Jetco.

NFC Times Exclusive: The cost and complexity of loading and provisioning applications on secure elements in NFC phones has held back mobile-payments rollouts and added to the growing interest of such alternatives as host-card emulation, Bluetooth low energy, even QR codes, observers agree.