NFC Times Exclusive Insight – CaixaBank, Spain’s large savings bank and one of the most important early adopters globally among financial institutions of SIM-based NFC payments, has introduced a mobile-payments app based on host card emulation.

The bank no doubt hopes its CaixaBank Pay app will reduce the fragmentation and what is believed to be low customer take-up it has experienced with its previous launches of NFC mobile payments using the SIM cards and apps of Spain’s three major telcos.

While not commenting on results of the current NFC payments services on SIM cards, a CaixaBank spokeswoman told NFC Times that the new HCE app “doesn’t require having a different SIM card” and is “more versatile and flexible.”