Toshiba has introduced an NFC Forum Type 3 tag chip that includes a wired interface, enabling it to be used to collect and store dynamic data generated by “normally standalone products, such as calculators, clocks, and healthcare items”... More
Archive for July 2014
Japan Airlines combines beacons and smartwatches to improve customer service at airports
Japan Airlines staff at Tokyo’s Haneda airport are being provided with smartwatches that work in conjunction with Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, to give management a way to assign staff more efficiently and respond more swiftly to customer requests. More
Australian supermarket chain launches mobile wallet that works with NFC stickers
Australian supermarket chain Coles has launched the Coles Mobile Wallet, an iOS and Android app that works in conjunction with an NFC sticker to provide customers with a way to make mobile payments, manage their spending, collect loyalty points and access special offers... More
IDATE forecasts NFC phones and payments volumes
Twenty-eight million consumers will use their NFC phone to make a mobile payment in 2014, a new forecast by IDATE reveals, and the value of transactions conducted via NFC will rise from an estimated €4.6 billion in 2014 to €53.8bn in 2018... More
Marriott to deliver rewards to guests via BLE
Hotel chain Marriott is adding support for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons and special offers to its rewards program, enabling guests to access deals provided by Marriott hotels and other businesses during their stay... More
Australian credit union launches HCE payments
CUA, Australia’s largest customer-owned financial institution, has become the first in the Asia Pacific region to launch an NFC payments service that makes use of host card emulation (HCE) technology... More
Singapore ups contactless spending
Singapore’s United Overseas Bank has reported a more than three-fold increase in contactless card transactions in the year to April 2014, with more than 500 contactless purchases now being made each day... More
1.75bn to use mobile banking
More than 1.75 billion mobile phone users will have used their device for banking purposes by the end of 2019, up from 800 million people this year, according to a new Juniper Research forecast... More
Brits turn to mobile for purchase decision making
Nearly half of all UK consumers with a tablet or smartphone (46%) now use mobile devices as their primary tool for telecoms purchase decision making, 39% for insurance and 33% for retail, according to new research from location ad platform xAd and call measurement technology provider Telmetrics... More
PayPal pays next day
PayPal is piloting Next-Day Settlement (NDS), a new service that cuts the time taken for transfers between a merchant’s PayPal account and their bank account from the usual three or four days to 24 hours... More
China UnionPay to offer QR payments?
China UnionPay is developing a QR code-based mobile payment service that will provide a way to make both online and offline mobile payments, according to Marbridge Consulting... More
French shopping centre uses BLE beacons to help retailers attract customers
Les Terrasses du Port, a new 480-hectare shopping centre in the French city of Marseille, has installed Europe’s largest network of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons, enabling retailers such as Zara and H&M to deliver promotional offers and information straight to shoppers’ smartphones... More
UK city to run NFC, QR and BLE shopper marketing pilot
Proximity commerce specialist Proxama has partnered with the Association of Town and City Management (ATCM) and Norwich Business Improvement District (BID) to run a shopper marketing pilot in the UK city of Norwich... More
New IoT consortium launches
Atmel, Broadcom, Dell, Intel, Samsung and Wind River have formed the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC), a new industry grouping that aims to improve the interoperability and define the connectivity requirements for the Internet of Things (IoT)... More
Seqr heads to UK
Swedish firm Seamless, developer of the NFC and QR-based Seqr mobile payments service, has signed deals with Optimal Payments and Contis Group to bring the solution to the UK... More
Synchrony invests in LoopPay
Synchrony Financial, formerly GE Capital Retail Finance, has made “a strategic investment” in LoopPay, developer of a mobile phone add-on that lets US consumers make payments at merchants equipped with magnetic stripe card terminals... More
60m BLE beacons to ship by 2019
Sixty million Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons worth US$500m will be shipped in 2019, ABI Research forecasts... More
Tamagotchi 4U to come with NFC
Japanese toy maker Bandai is to include NFC in the next version of its Tamagotchi electronic pets, enabling owners to tap their device on ‘Touch Spots’ and against other Tamagotchis and smartphones to exchange items and play games... More
Two thirds of UK smartphone owners open to the idea of mobile wallets
Two thirds of UK smartphone owners are open to the idea of using a mobile wallet, according to a survey conducted by Marketing Sciences — but most consumers want to use a mobile wallet to collect loyalty points and offers rather than for making payments... More
British Banking Association reports on UK’s banking ‘revolution’
Mobile and internet banking in the UK is now being used for transactions worth nearly £1bn a day and totalling £6.4bn a week, up from £5.8bn last year, according to an industry-wide report on how mobile technology is changing the banking industry from the British Banking Association and Ernst & Young... More