Interbank Card Center (Bankalararas? Kart Merkezi-BKM), a Turkish payments service provider, has introduced host card emulation enabled payments services for banks in the country.
HCE will allow any NFC application to emulate a payment card enabling users to pay with their smart phones while allowing issuing banks to host payment accounts in a secure, virtual cloud.
The project that will include all Turkish banks to the system by the end of 2015 will permit contactless payments with mobile devices by using HCE technology.
The technology will be available on mobile devices based on Android 4.4 or higher versions operating system, which are compatible with NFC.
BKM CEO Soner Canko said: "Cloud based HCE is the most advanced and most recent method of NFC technology for payments. HCE payment applications run independently from the services of mobile operators and without any need for a SIM Card replacement.

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By GlobalData"This common project of BKM with the banks will allow Turkish cardholders to benefit from contactless transactions with their own smart mobile devices, thanks to HCE technology."