Amazon has launched Fire, a smartphone that includes 3D “dynamic perspective” technology and a dedicated Firefly button that lets users recognize — and buy from Amazon — physical products, movies and music that they come across as they shop, browse and socialize... More
Shoppers who receive marketing messages via inMarket’s Mobile to Mortar (M2M) iBeacon platform interact more with advertised products, increase their in-store app usage and are more likely to keep an app on their phone, a survey of 25,000 US consumers has found... More
US telecoms firm AT&T is to use technology from CorFire to power NFC Connect, a new platform that will enable it to offer a wide range of NFC services outside of the Isis mobile commerce venture it co-owns with Verizon and T-Mobile... More
US mobile payments service LevelUp is to provide its merchants with the ability to push offers to shoppers via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons built into the next version of its POS device... More
POS maker Verifone has expanded its Way2Ride mobile payments service to Philadelphia, allowing taxi users in the US city to pay for their journey using a sound-based proximity mobile communications technology... More
The NFC Forum and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) have updated their “Bluetooth secure simple pairing using NFC” developer guide... More
Yaap, a joint venture between Spanish banks CaixaBank and Banco Santander and mobile network operator Telefonica, has launched a mobile commerce platform that lets consumers access merchant offers on their mobile device and then redeem them automatically by simply paying for a purchase with a pre-linked debit or credit card... More
Ticketmaster has launched an iPhone app that uses an animated watermark to prove that a mobile ticket is authentic and valid... More
The USPTO has published a patent application by three Intel engineers that describes an NFC antenna design which makes use of a cascaded coil concept to enable interactions to be performed without a user needing to precisely orientate their phone... More
Groupement des Cartes Bancaires CB, the French bank card association which pioneered the use of chip cards for payments in the 1980s, expects to enable member banks to issue customers with keyfobs supporting fingerprint payments by the end of this year... More
French banking group Credit Mutuel-CIC has introduced an NFC payments service that is available to customers regardless of their mobile network operator... More
“In the area of mobile, there is just tremendous opportunity to enhance the end-to-end experience in both the accommodation business as well as the restaurant business by leveraging mobile as an asset,” Darren Huston, president and CEO of The Priceline Group, has told investors following the accommodation booking giant’s $2.6bn acquisition of OpenTable... More
Fast food chain Chick-fil-A has begun a mobile payments pilot in the Triad area of North Carolina... More
Attendees at this week’s HP Discover 2014 Conference in Las Vegas have been able to earn rewards for visiting all areas of the show by taking part in a mobile scavenger hunt... More
Advertising industry executives attending the annual Cannes Lions festival in France next week will be able to use an iBeacon-powered “Around Me” feature within the event’s official iPhone app to detect nearby attendees and connect with them... More
Priceline, the world’s leading accommodation booking platform, is to buy restaurant booking service OpenTable for $103 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at US$2.6billion... More
Restaurant chain Chili’s Grill & Bar is installing 45,000 Ziosk tabletop tablets in 823 outlets across the US, enabling customers to browse the menu, place orders, leave feedback, access entertainment services and pay from their table, using an integrated card reader... More
Samsung has launched the Galaxy Tab S, a new Android tablet that is available in 10.5 inch and 8.4 inch versions... More
Banco do Brasil has partnered with mobile network operator Oi and Visa to offer NFC mobile payments in Brazil... More
The NFC Forum is to introduce a series of changes to its certification policy in January 2015... More