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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – In certain markets, Apple continues to face resistance from major banks, which, among other things, do not want to participate in an Apple-branded wallet. That’s true in Australia and in such major Western European markets as France, Spain and Italy, where only one major bank in each country is supporting Apple Pay.

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 – Commonwealth Bank of Australia will support mobile payments with Fitbit Pay and the wearables maker’s forthcoming Ionic smartwatch, NFC Times has learned. That’s in addition to support for Garmin Pay and Android Pay, which the bank announced earlier this week; but the bank appears set to continue snubbing Apple Pay.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Google’s new payments app in India, Tez, uses proprietary sound-based technology to enable mobile payments–shunning both NFC and also apparently scannable QR codes, as the tech giant seeks to break into the country’s rapidly growing but increasingly crowded digital payments market.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – TAIPEI, Taiwan: EasyCard Corp., which runs the largest closed-loop transit and retail payments service in Taiwan, is seeking to become the first major transit fare-collection system globally to roll out Bluetooth-based mobile ticketing. But Taiwan’s strict financial regulator still has doubts about the security of the technology.