Three quarters (76%) of the UK’s “Generation Z” consumers — aged between 16 and 24 — say they would feel comfortable making a payment using biometric security, a survey conducted by Opinion Matters for Visa Europe has revealed, and 69% believe it would make their lives faster and easier... More
Archive for February 2015
Contactless payment card shipments grow 35%
Four out of every 10 smart payment cards shipped in 2014 (40%) were contactless, representing a year-on-year growth of 35% with much of the increase driven by Europe and Asia, the Smart Payment Association’s annual review of the card payment market has revealed... More
DCR wins award for HCE prepaid payments service
PARTNER NEWS: DCR’s truTap Mobile Wallet, powered by Carta Worldwide’s host card emulation (HCE) technology, has been named the “Gotta-Have Mobile App” in Paybefore’s annual awards for excellence in the worldwide prepaid, mobile and emerging payments industry... More
NXP CEO: China will be next major NFC payments market
Chip maker NXP will focus on the “significant” Chinese market for mobile wallets, the firm’s CEO has said, as the company revealed a 40% increase in sales for its emerging ID business in a fourth quarter earnings call... More
Swatch to launch NFC smartwatch
Swiss watchmaker Swatch Group is to launch a smartwatch that includes NFC and mobile payments capabilities and works with both Android and Windows phones, CEO Nick Hayek has told Bloomberg... More
Contactless card payments treble in Britain in 2014
Ten contactless transactions took place in the UK every second in 2014, The UK Cards Association has revealed, and total spending on contactless cards more than trebled to reach a record £2.32bn... More
HCE specialist SimplyTapp raises an additional US$2.5m
PARTNER NEWS: Fast growing mobile payments platform provider Mozido has made a US$2.5m investment in SimplyTapp, bringing the total amount raised in the host card emulation (HCE) specialist’s Series B financing round to US$10.1m... More
Knit extends Google Cardboard with NFC objects
Creative technology agency Knit has developed a range of NFC-enabled Cardboard Objects that are designed to fit inside a modified version of Google’s Cardboard virtual reality (VR) headset to let users view “relevant app-based content” using real world objects... More
Du backs Beam QR wallet
Mobile network operator Du has formed a partnership with mobile payment service Beam Wallet and Majid Al Futtaim Ventures to promote Beam’s QR code solution to retailers and petrol stations across Dubai... More
Apple Pay now live at more than 60 banks
Apple has added more than a dozen new banks to its list of institutions that now support Apple Pay, bringing the total count to more than 60, 9to5mac reports... More
NFC security strategies: webinar slides now available
The slides from NFC World’s recent Evaluating NFC Security Strategies webinar are now available in the NFC World Knowledge Centre... More
PayPal curtails in-store ambitions
The team working on PayPal’s move into in-store payments has been among the hardest hit by layoffs across parent Ebay Inc’s three divisions, Re/code reports, adding that “PayPal’s in-store initiatives, which includes mobile payments and a credit card reader called PayPal Here, have largely been viewed as big disappointments inside the company”... More
Mobile biometrics market to be worth US$33.3bn a year
By 2020, smart mobile devices will include embedded biometric sensors as standard, according to research conducted by Acuity Market Intelligence, creating a US$33.3bn a year market for biometric products and services... More
NFC World to host free webinar on testing cloud-based mobile payments
Join NFC World and payments testing specialist Gerd Thys from Clear2Pay on Tuesday 24 February to gain an in-depth understanding of the new testing, quality and compliance challenges created by the arrival of HCE and tokenization — and how to address them... More
Visa Europe to invest in digital payments
Visa Europe is to invest more than €200m a year in new payments technologies to accelerate the growth of digital payments, the payments network has announced... More
Snapchat adopts QR friending
Photo messaging platform Snapchat is letting users add friends to their social network by scanning Snaptags, unique QR codes assigned to each user... More
MasterCard moves towards MasterPass tokenization
MasterCard is to incorporate tokenization technology into its MasterPass digital wallet in the near future, CEO Ajay Banga has told analysts during the payment network’s 2014 year end earnings call... More
One in three Millennials to use a mobile wallet in 2015
5% of US consumers currently use a mobile wallet and 18% intend to use one in the next year, credit scorer Fico’s “Millennial Banking Insights and Opportunity” survey has found, with the percentage rising to 32% among Millennials — defined as those born between 1980 and 1994... More
ATM operators report on EMV readiness
More than six in ten (61%) US ATM operators expect “the vast majority” of their network will be capable of handling EMV transactions by the end of 2016, the ATM Industry Association has revealed... More
Kaspersky debuts secure QR scanner
Antivirus and security software provider Kaspersky Lab has launched Kaspersky QR Scanner, an app that warns users of potentially dangerous links within QR codes when they scan with their mobile device... More