A mobile-payments joint venture in Taiwan led by banking groups has chosen a trusted service manager, which could act as an aggregation service for a number of large and small banks in the country wanting to provision their applications on NFC phones, NFC Times has learned.

The joint venture, the Taiwan Mobile Payment Co., which was formed in February by Taiwan’s largest credit card processor and acquirer, NCCC; ATM and interbank group, FISC; and payments clearing house, TWNCH; chose France-based Gemalto to provide it with technology to operate a service provider TSM, NFC Times has learned. Three other TSM vendors submitted tenders in late March for the contract. Gemalto faces a year-end deadline for the platform to be live.

The joint venture partners rejected the idea of using a TSM hub being built by the island nation’s five mobile network operators, along with closed-loop payment scheme EasyCard Corp. That TSM platform is being developed and licensed by France-based Safran Morpho, which was selected for the job in January for a low price. 

There is a third major TSM platform, developed in-house by Taiwan’s largest telco, Chunghwa Telecom, and some observers believe the platforms being run by different vendors with different interests is a recipe for interoperability problems and fragmentation, despite the fact that two of the platforms are intended as TSM aggregators or hubs.

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Among Topics Covered: 

Selection of TSM vendor for service provider-TSM platform being set up by the joint venture of Taiwanese banking groups Other vendors that bid on the contract Possible fragmentation with TSM platform of telco led group and separate platform from Taiwan’s No. 1 telco Funding and structure for Taiwan’s two TSM joint ventures Low contract prices expected in Taiwan for TSM platforms Muted impact so far for host-card emulation

Among companies and organizations mentioned:

Mobile Payment Co. Ltd.
Alliance Digital Technology Co.
Gemalto
National Credit Card Center (NCCC)
FISC
TWNCH
Safran Morpho
Giesecke & Devrient
EasyCard Corp.
Smart Catch
Oberthur Technologies
Taiwan Mobile
Far EasTone 

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