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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Walmart Inc. has ended a trial of its Mobile Express Scan & Go app in its Walmart stores in the U.S., which had enabled shoppers to scan their items themselves and pay with a stored credit or debit card, then leave the store, after having a greeter scan a bar code in their apps to briefly check the receipt.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – As more U.S. merchants launch their own payments apps, some seem positioned to offer serious competition to Apple Pay and the other NFC “Pays” wallets.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Carrefour and China UnionPay have launched their 2-D bar code-based Carrefour Pay wallet feature, as UnionPay continues to try to find relevance in a booming Chinese mobile payments market now dominated by Alipay and WeChat Pay.  

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Wal-Mart Stores has introduced a “Scan & Go” mobile-shopping and payments app for a limited number of its regular stores in five U.S. states, and said it plans to roll out the service more widely. It follows the launch last year of a very similar app for its warehouse store chain, Sam’s Club, as NFC Times has reported.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – With the widespread use of Uber and launch of the Amazon Go experiment, some payments industry observers are predicting it might not be too long before invisible payments comes to brick-and-mortar stores.

NFC TIMES Exclusive –  NFC wallets are failing to catch on in the U.S., especially for in-store transactions, for a variety of reasons, including poor awareness among consumers and cashiers, lack of full buy-in from merchants, problems with certifying terminals for contactless and an insufficient value proposition, said industry players, including a representative from Google.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – LAS VEGAS, Nev.: It’s been more than two and a half years since Apple Pay launched in the U.S., and retail giant Wal-Mart Stores still is no closer to accepting NFC at its 4,000-plus stores in the U.S. then when Apple began rolling out its NFC-enabled mobile payments service in October of 2014.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Apple CEO Tim Cook, with typical enthusiasm, touted Apple Pay’s “phenomenal traction” yesterday in a conference call with analysts. But with one exception, he again failed to release any actual transaction figures for the mobile payments service, while also apparently overstating the contactless and NFC acceptance footprint in the U.S.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – While the base of contactless point-of-sale terminals in the U.S. has grown substantially over the past two and a half years, some of the country’s largest merchants continue to resist the idea of accepting such NFC wallets as Apple Pay and Android Pay.

NFC Times Exclusive – The rollout of digital payments, including services using NFC technology, are undoubtedly making progress, especially compared with just a few years ago.