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NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Less than a week after Gemalto’s board unanimously rejected an acquisition offer from France-based IT and consulting group Atos, complaining that Atos’ bid at €46 (US$54.18) per share “significantly undervalued the company” and that Gemalto is “best positioned to grow successfully on a standalone basis,” the board has publicly changed course and has unanimously approved a takeover offer from France-based Thales that is only 11% higher.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – The board of struggling French smart card and security vendor Gemalto has rejected an all-cash €4.3 billion (US$5.08 billion) takeover bid by France-based IT services and consulting company Atos, calling Atos’ €46-per-share bid “opportunistic,” and contending that it “significantly undervalues” the company, among other objections.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – French IT services group Atos hopes to bolster its cybersecurity, IoT and payments offers with its €4.3 billion (US$5.07 billion) unsolicited bid to buy struggling France-based smart card and digital security vendor Gemalto.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Shares in France-based vendor Gemalto fell sharply today as it issued warnings before markets opened that its revenue and profit would badly miss projections this year.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight ­– Apple Pay launched Monday in Japan as Apple’s 12^th market for its mobile payments service and the first to support closed

NFC Times Exclusive – Alliance Digital Technology Co., the joint venture of five Taiwanese mobile operators and transit fare-collection operator EasyCard Corp., is steering away from the TSM business, which was the reason it formed three years ago, NFC Times has learned. It will add a focus on providing mobile ID and authentication, the JV told NFC Times.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Although reporting positive overall results for 2015, France-based Gemalto today said SIM revenue fell by 17% and mobile-financial services revenue dropped by 8% for the year, both of which it blamed at least in part on the closing of the U.S. Softcard joint venture last year.

NFC Times Exclusive Insight – France-based Gemalto, which has been heavily invested in trusted service management and NFC SIM cards in the past, is continuing to push cloud-based payments, announcing certification by MasterCard for its full host card emulation offer–with the help of technology from Moroccan-based payments software company HPS.

NFC Times dissects the challenges and problems that killed the once-touted Valyou wallet service after only 13 months of operation.

NFC Times Exclusive – When Norway’s largest telco, Telenor, and its biggest bank, then called DnB NOR, announced plans to form an NFC joint venture in April of 2008, the future of NFC payments using SIM cards looked promising, but it was too early to launch service.

NFC Times Exclusive – MasterCard has released its first list of certified vendors for host card emulation products supporting its cloud-based payments specifications, though the list includes relatively few suppliers so far. Meanwhile, neither Visa nor MasterCard has apparently certified tokenization suppliers.