NFC Times Exclusive – UK-based vendor Proxama said three issuers in the UK and one in Spain are planning to launch HCE in 2015, and one or more of them are considering using a trusted execution environment, or TEE, to add security to the implementations.

The launches are likely to be soft launches followed by commercial rollouts, according to Proxama, which declined to name the issuers. “The good news is that issuers are tired of pilots. Although they may start with a soft launch, all initiatives intend full commercialization,” Pascal Caillon, Proxama’s general manager for North America, told NFC Times.

He said the first UK issuer plans to launch in the first quarter of 2015. “It's an issuer that functions also as an enabler for other brands,” he said, meaning that the issuer’s cards are often co-branded. A second UK issuer will likely launch later in the first quarter of the year, with the third planning a second quarter launch. He had previously described all three as “large issuers”.