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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Australia’s largest domestic debit network, eftpos, told NFC Times the network’s planned tokenization service would launch on time and contends the service would not struggle against Visa and MasterCard if those major networks launched their “free” tokenization services in Australia.

UPDATED: NFC Times Exclusive – Australian credit union CUA has seen a 16% increase in value of transactions for mobile payments since the launch of its host-card emulation mobile-payments app last summer, though user numbers have remained small 11 months after one of the first HCE commercial launches globally.

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.

Samsung Electronics reportedly says it has an agreement with payment network China UnionPay that would enable embedded chips in more than 3 million of its devices in China with China UnionPay’s contactless-payments service, though no banks have yet been mentioned as issuers.

Westpac New Zealand has announced a small trial of host-card emulation-based payments, with plans to introduce the technology to customers early next year.

Australia’s largest credit union, CUA, is the first financial institution in Asia-Pacific to commercially launch mobile payments using host-card emulation, announcing the move today in Australia.

Russian Standard Bank launched its long-planned NFC-payments service on embedded chips in Samsung NFC devices, under an earlier partnership deal between Samsung Electronics and MasterCard Worldwide.

NFC Times Exclusive: Despite the interest in host-card emulation in North America and Europe grabbing the spotlight, there is a good chance that banks and other issuers in Asia-Pacific could generally commercialize the technology first, sources told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive: Assuming Apple doesn’t put embedded secure elements in its next iPhone as some are predicting, the future for the embedded chip technology for NFC phones is uncertain–beset by stalled projects, growing interest in host-card emulation and questionable continued support from Samsung.

A second of Australia’s big four banks, Westpac Banking Corp., said it will finally be ready to launch its long-planned NFC contactless payments service with Visa using embedded chips in Samsung phones by the end of April, the bank told NFC Times.