Westpac has begun a host card emulation (HCE) pilot in New Zealand, enabling customers’ credit and debit card details to be securely stored in the cloud and then used at the point of sale to make mobile payments on their Android NFC device... More
UK payments technology specialist Consult Hyperion has unveiled a proof-of-concept solution that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and host card emulation (HCE) to enable both iPhone and Android NFC phone owners to make MasterCard, Visa and other open loop EMV payments at the point of sale... More
CUA, Australia’s largest customer-owned financial institution, has become the first in the Asia Pacific region to launch an NFC payments service that makes use of host card emulation (HCE) technology... More
BBVA has become the first bank to launch a commercial NFC payments service that makes use of Visa’s cloud-based payments specifications... More
ID card provider HID Global has begun beta testing a new version of its Seos mobile keys platform that adds Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support to its existing NFC functionality... More
A guide to host card emulation (HCE) and SIM-based NFC payments options has been produced by Consult Hyperion, in conjunction with GSMA... More
SimplyTapp, the US startup that worked with Google to add support for host card emulation (HCE) to Android, is now offering a self-service platform for card issuers and other mobile app developers looking to pilot HCE solutions... More
Host Card Emulation (HCE) is likely to lead to higher demand for SIM-based NFC payments services and new opportunities for mobile network operators, SIMalliance — which initially warned against HCE for security reasons — has now decided... More
PrePay Solutions (PPS), a prepaid card program manager jointly owned by MasterCard and Edenred, has partnered with NFC specialist Proxama to provide its clients the ability to offer host card emulation-based NFC services to their customers... More
Bell ID and Spanish ticketing specialist Aditium have picked up awards at a live pitch contest to identify ‘the next big thing’ in proximity... More
Canada-based coffee chain Tim Hortons has expanded its mobile payments service, first launched using host card emulation (HCE) technology in December 2013, with the introduction of barcode-based mobile payments across its outlets in the USA and Canada... More
“We see growing evidence Apple will adopt NFC as a core part of its mobile payments strategy,” a new report from investment firm Morgan Stanley says — and evidence suggests that NXP has already won the contract to supply NFC controller chips for the iPhone 6... More
Russia’s Sberbank, Europe’s third largest bank with more than 100million customers, has begun piloting NFC payments in Moscow using embedded secure elements... More
There will be more than 1.5billion mobile wallets in use around the world by 2018, according to a new forecast from Juniper Research, representing one in five handsets and up from one in 10 at the end of 2013... More
Starting today, NFC World has a new name and a new mission — to report on the full array of emerging technologies that are transforming how consumers choose what to buy, who to buy from, and how to pay... More
Sequent Software has added support for cloud-based issuance, tokenization and host card emulation (HCE) to its digital issuance platform... More
“Host card emulation is good for the NFC ecosystem as a whole, but remains immature, unstandardised and, relative to secure element based deployments, vulnerable to malicious attack,” says SIM card manufacturer association SIMalliance, which has published an HCE discussion paper called Secure Element Deployment & Host Card Emulation... More
A total of 4.2bn SIMs were shipped in 2013 by members of the SIMalliance, an organisation that represents suppliers responsible for 86% of the global SIM market, 5% down on 2012... More
The arrival of host card emulation (HCE) has led to a re-think of online payments giant PayPal’s famously anti-NFC point of view, company president David Marcus has revealed... More
One in nine attendees at Mobile World Congress (11.8%) made use of the NFC Badge function available at this year’s event, the GSMA has told NFC World, and there was a “significant increase” in the number of people participating in the NFC Experience as a whole this year... More