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NFC TIMES Exclusive – Unlike at least some other major networks, including Mastercard, Visa has shown no intention of allowing third-party token service providers to tokenize Visa-branded cards, requiring nearly all issuers to use Visa’s own Visa Token Service, or VTS, sources told NFC Times.

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 – Toronto-Dominion Bank, one of Canada’s largest banks, is the first in the country to adopt Visa's tokenization technology and the third outside the U.S. that have been announced so far using the payment scheme’s tokenization service.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Visa says its move to phase out bank-issued alternate PANs and promote tokenization as specified by EMVCo–including its own Visa Token Service–is an effort to capitalize on the proliferation of Internet of Things devices that could be used for payments. 

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – MasterCard Worldwide Tuesday announced its hub-like commercial tokenization program, Digital Enablement Express, a widely expected move that matches a similar service that rival Visa introduced in late May, Visa Digital Enablement Program, or VDEP. Like VDEP, MasterCard’s new tokenization program has signed up Google and Samsung for their respective payments services, though neither MasterCard nor Visa has announced that Apple would join.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Samsung Electronics today released exact dates for when it plans to launch its mobile-payments service, Samsung Pay–Aug. 20 in South Korea and the U.S. on Sept. 28–while saying it also intends to roll out the service in the UK, Spain and China.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Apple today announced major new updates to Apple Pay, including the addition of store credit, debit and loyalty cards in the U.S., expansion of the mobile-payments service to its first overseas market, the UK, and a renaming of the wallet app itself from Passbook to Wallet.