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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive – Major point-of sale-terminal vendors say that their most recently deployed terminals and perhaps others will be ready to accept loyalty cards from Apple’s Wallet when the nonpayment application launches with iOS 9 this fall.

NFC Times Exclusive – U.S.-based chip vendor Broadcom is the latest component supplier to make a play for the market for NFC-enabled mobile point-of-sale devices, expected to see strong demand as mobile-payment services like Apple Pay continue to expand.

U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone has confirmed reports that its EMV- and NFC-enabled mobile POS attachment for the iPhone 5s is being deployed by Apple for its employees to use to accept card payments in its retail stores.

Mexican bank Banamex is beginning a rollout of contactless payment and plans to have 12,000 contactless terminals and about 1 million debit and credit cards deployed by the end of the year in and around Mexico City, according to MasterCard Worldwide and point-of-sale terminal vendor VeriFone.

Point-of-sale terminal supplier VeriFone is the second major POS terminal vendor to announce a deal to support PayPal’s in-store payment system in its devices.

The Isis mobile operator joint venture has announced that four major point-of-sale terminal and contactless reader vendors have licensed its mobile-commerce application, as the venture gears up for its soft launch in two cities this summer.

The senior director of financial services for Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics chain in the United States, said she believes NFC holds great promise but fears costs will be daunting, standards are insufficient and the chain’s customer data might be used to benefit competitors.

While U.S.-based Vivotech has not been profitable during its first 10 years, investors in its latest funding round apparently believe the vendor is well-positioned to take advantage of the Google-style push for NFC-based mobile commerce.

U.S.-based Intuit is demonstrating an NFC mobile-payment application for Android NFC phones that it says could enable small merchants to accept credit card payments with a tap of their phones on the NFC phones of customers.

France-based point-of-sale terminal vendor Ingenico today announced it has agreed to buy the U.S. POS terminal business of competing vendor Hypercom, in anticipation of NFC rollouts.