Customers of nine banks representing 80% of the Belgian market can now make use of Sixdots, a mobile wallet service that uses a combination of QR codes and a six-digit PIN to make payments in stores, online and between friends... More
PARTNER NEWS: NXP is to host a webinar exploring its recently launched Mifare SDK Advanced NFC development kit at 10:00 CET and 17:00 CET on Tuesday 16 December... More
Starbucks is to use Bluetooth beacon technology in the first of its new Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room locations in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of Seattle in the coming year... More
Mobile messaging provider Outspoken has added support for Google Wallet to its digital wallet delivery solution, enabling marketers to distribute offers to a user’s mobile wallet via a text message... More
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has adopted version 4.2 of the Bluetooth core specification, introducing security improvements that mean Bluetooth beacons are now unable to engage with smartphones without permission from the user and making it harder for eavesdroppers to track a device via its Bluetooth connection. More
Chip maker Broadcom has integrated NFC into its Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices (Wiced) software development kit with the aim of making it easier for developers to build smart homes and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions that combine NFC, WiFi and Bluetooth Smart functionality... More
MasterCard’s cloud-based payment service is now available in China, following its initial launch in the US in September 2014... More
More than eight thousand locations across the Spanish city of Barcelona are to be equipped with NFC and QR touchpoints that deliver information on local services directly to visitors’ and citizens’ smartphones... More
Apple Pay is yet to gain widespread adoption among iPhone 6 owners due to poor awareness of which stores accept the NFC payments technology and a lack of understanding of how the service works, a survey conducted by InfoScout has found. Those who have used it, however, compare it highly favourably to using a traditional plastic card. More
Starbucks’ Mobile Order & Pay service is now live in Portland, Oregon ahead of a planned nationwide roll out across the US that will begin in 2015... More
Blarney Castle, a medieval stronghold and tourist attraction in Ireland, is attaching custom-developed NFC tags to its trees so that gardeners will be able to easily create and update a database of information about each individual tree while they work... More
Seven in ten (71%) US IT operations, security, and electronic deployment professionals consider NFC to be essential or very important to their organization’s security, a survey by Ponemon Institute for HP Atalla has found, with host card emulation (HCE) following closely behind at 68%... More
Toshiba has unveiled a dual-function IC that includes both a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio and an NFC Type 3 (Felica) tag... More
Dutch startup BitStraat has launched a project aimed at turning Amsterdam into Bitcoin City, providing one hundred merchants with a free tablet-based POS terminal they can use to process mobile payments made using the virtual currency... More
Office Depot has become the first retail chain to roll out Shazam In-Store, a mobile marketing platform that makes use of the Shazam music discovery app, inaudible digital watermarks, a merchant’s overhead music system and a location-based platform developed by Mood Media to send promotional messages to shoppers’ mobile phones... More
Diners at Turkish restaurant Olivia’s Pizzeria have become the first in the country to be able to use their BKM Express digital wallet to pay for their meals with their mobile phone... More
UK startup Quikkly has unveiled an alternative to QR codes that aims to provide an improved user experience and increased consumer uptake. “QR codes are great for machines, but they weren’t designed for people,” Quikkly says. “We’ve designed Quikkly Tags to be understandable by everyone. It’s clear what app to use and it’s clear what will happen when you scan the tag.” More
Mobile phone and tablet users will be making 195bn mobile transactions a year by 2019, up from 72bn this year, Juniper Research forecasts... More
Alipay is making it possible for Chinese tourists to purchase transport passes for Singapore, Thailand and Macau ahead of travel and then collect them by scanning a barcode on their mobile phones at booths and kiosks at their destination... More
UK startup Yoyo is to provide a mobile payments and loyalty app to Malaysian budget airline AirAsia, City AM reports... More