NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Turkish payment card organization and network BKM has chosen HCE payments over the SIM-based service it had launched previously, with a spokeswoman saying the banking group believes HCE will be simpler to deploy and more popular with consumers than SIM-based services, which have seen low consumer take-up in the country, BKM told NFC Times.

BKM announced a pilot of HCE this week, which spokeswoman Ozge Celik described to NFC Times as more of a proof of concept. “We are testing our member bank integration capabilities, user interface needs, security levels, acceptance network readiness, etc.,” she said. “In parallel to the proof of concept, we will continue the new bank integrations and system developments,” she told NFC Times.

As NFC Times reported in early December, Turkey’s largest mobile operator, Turkcell, one of the first telcos globally to launch NFC service commercially, has pulled back from the technology, having seen too little take-up for NFC retail payments, NFC Times has learned.