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Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Visa is supporting another provisioning company, Sweden-based Fidesmo, to deliver and manage Visa-generated tokens to passive wearables, such as analog designer watches, keyrings and bracelets. The move, which follows Visa’s support in recent months for at least one other provisioning company serving an analog watchmaker, promises to expand use of payments wearables to more issuers, markets and devices.  

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Two more large Nordic banks, Nordea and Swedbank, have launched contactless payments on analog watches, using technology from Swedish provisioning company Fidesmo that enables consumers to buy the watches and provision them with tokenized Mastercard-branded cards after the sale by tapping the watches on Android NFC phones.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – With Switzerland’s No. 2 bank, Credit Suisse, expected to participate in Apple Pay, the U.S.-based tech giant continues to chip away at resistance among major European banks to joining its digital payments service.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based Nxt-ID disclosed late Thursday that the spin-off of its payments unit, Fit Pay, which provides bank card provisioning for Garmin Pay, would again be delayed, as it waits another couple of weeks for the closing of a nearly $17 million loan it needs to move forward with the new company.

NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Small Swedish analog watchmaker TRIWA next week plans to launch payments wearables enabled for tokenized Mastercard-branded cards issued by Swedish banking group SEB, with provisioning company Fidesmo telling NFC Times there will be more watch brands to come enabling payments.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – With the announcement this month by large analog watchmaker Swatch of the expansion of its digital payments service SwatchPAY! to Europe, the payments wearables market could see a considerable change.

NFC TIMES Exclusive – Switzerland-based watchmaker Swatch plans to roll out its SwatchPAY! contactless payments service to a number of European countries and then perhaps globally, representing budding competition to Apple Pay, Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay. But unlike these three smartwatch-enabled Pays services and others, SwatchPAY! uses low-cost analog watches as its payments devices.