Standard Bank, one of South Africa’s largest financial services groups, has launched a service that allows small merchants to accept mobile payments by simply placing a QR code at their point of sale, with no POS terminal required... More
Archive for May 2014
Telstra uses NFC to cut costs and improve customer service for broadband users
Australian telecommunications provider Telstra is now applying NFC tags to all its broadband modems, enabling customers to access personalised help, information and support recommendations by tapping the tag with their NFC phone... More
Total gas stations offer mobile payments in Uganda
Customers at 45 Total gas stations in Uganda can now use their Airtel Money account to pay for fuel and services as well as make in-store purchases with their mobile phone... More
Morgan Stanley predicts Apple will include NFC in iPhone 6 — and NXP will supply the controller chips
“We see growing evidence Apple will adopt NFC as a core part of its mobile payments strategy,” a new report from investment firm Morgan Stanley says — and evidence suggests that NXP has already won the contract to supply NFC controller chips for the iPhone 6... More
Samsung to add biometrics to more devices
Samsung is to include biometric sensors in tablets and low-end mobile phones, delegates at the company’s 2014 Investors Forum in Hong Kong have heard... More
Sberbank to launch HCE payments in Russia
Russia’s Sberbank, Europe’s third largest bank with more than 100million customers, has begun piloting NFC payments in Moscow using embedded secure elements... More
McDonald’s World Cup app turns fast food into football match
McDonald’s is set to roll out a new campaign for the 2014 Fifa World Cup using an augmented reality app to turn packaging and tables into virtual football games... More
Juniper predicts 1.5bn mobile wallets in 2018
There will be more than 1.5billion mobile wallets in use around the world by 2018, according to a new forecast from Juniper Research, representing one in five handsets and up from one in 10 at the end of 2013... More
London taxi firm promotes app downloads with NFC and QR stickers
Radio Taxis, one of London’s biggest taxi operators, is promoting downloads of its mobile app by placing NFC and QR code stickers in its 2,500 vehicles... More
US sports venues to get interactive displays
Sports venue display provider Access Sports Media is to use Blue Bite’s mTag platform to add NFC, QR, SMS and geofencing capabilities to its more than 20,000 displays in 200 US sports venues... More
Slovakia gets NFC payments
Deutsche Telekom’s MyWallet NFC platform is now available to customers of Slovak Telekom, a Slovakian carrier majority owned by Deutsche Telekom... More
Adafruit publishes NFC wearables DIY guide
Electronics hobby supplier Adafruit Industries has posted a DIY guide to creating wearable NFC devices that can be used to unlock an Android phone... More
LifeLock empties Lemon Wallet
Identify theft protection provider LifeLock has withdrawn LifeLock Wallet, a service built on Lemon Wallet which it acquired for US$50m in December 2013... More
PayPal tests beacons
PayPal Beacon, a mobile payment service that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons to let shoppers make “hands free” payments, is now undergoing pilot testing in Palo Alto... More
Safaricom reports on merchant adoption of mobile money at the point of sale
Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom has now signed up 122,000 merchants for Lipa na M-Pesa, a service launched in June 2013 that enables Kenyan consumers to use the funds stored in their M-Pesa mobile money account to pay for goods in stores... More
Square’s finances revealed
Mobile point-of-sale provider Square lost US$100m in 2013 but is making a 34% gross margin on its processing business, according to leaked internal documents seen by Fortune... More
mPOS use to soar
The number of installed mobile point-of-sale devices is set to grow fivefold to reach 51m by 2019, or 46% of the overall POS market, ABI Research says... More
OpenTable adds Glass bookings
Restaurant booking service OpenTable has introduced a Google Glass version of its app... More
Google Play adds PayPal
Google Play users in 12 countries can now charge the cost of their purchases to their PayPal account... More
SMEs ready to embrace mPOS
The use of mobile point-of-sale solutions by small businesses in Europe will take off dramatically in 2014, according to a survey of 2,000 SMEs commissioned by Visa Europe... More