Apple has been granted a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for an authentication system to allow owners to unlock content on their devices by taking a picture of their face... More
Archive for July 2015
Henry Holland to weave NFC and BLE into clothes for London Fashion Week
British fashion designer Henry Holland is to integrate NFC and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technologies into clothing designs as part of his spring/summer 2016 collection that will feature on stage during London Fashion Week in September... More
Alipay 9 launches with support for Koubei merchant payments and P2P transfers
Ant Financial has released a new version of its Alipay app for iOS and Android, adding new Friends and Merchants tabs that provide support for peer-to-peer payments and for Koubei, the US$1bn mobile commerce joint venture between Ant Financial and Alibaba that was announced last month. More
Singapore to trial contactless payments for transport
Singapore’s Ministry of Transport and Land Transport Authority (LTA) will trial contactless payments using devices including wristbands later this year... More
23 more US banks add Apple Pay
Apple has added an additional 23 banks and credit unions to the list of financial institutions that support Apple Pay in the US... More
Mercedes E-Class to get secure NFC keys
Mercedes-Benz’s upcoming W213 E-Class car will come equipped with NFC to allow keyless entry and starting... More
Samsung Pay enters beta testing
Korean credit card firm Samsung Card is recruiting beta testers for Samsung Pay to pilot the mobile payments service in “various major offline member stores” from July 15 to August 20, Korea Bizwire reports... More
One in four think UK will be cashless in 10 years
Nearly one in four UK consumers (23%) think the country will become a cashless society within 10 years, research from Equifax and Gorkana Surveys reveals... More
Macau shops to get Alipay mobile payments upgrade
Shops and restaurants in Macau which accept the Macau Pass contactless card can now apply to upgrade their terminals to enable support for Alipay mobile payments and China UnionPay Quick Pass cards... More
Barclaycard offers 50% off bPay wearables
Barclaycard is offering 50% off its second generation bPay contactless wearables during July via an online code that can be redeemed from its website... More
Barclays to support Zapp ‘Pay by Bank app’ mobile payments
Barclays has become the latest bank to announce its support for Zapp, a mobile payments startup formed by payments infrastructure operator VocaLink that will work via an integration with existing mobile banking apps for online payments initially, with in-store payments based on NFC to be launched at a later date... More
MyOrder to add HCE virtual cards for in-store payments
Dutch mobile order and payment provider MyOrder is to add virtual cards based on host card emulation (HCE) issued by German payments technology provider Wirecard to its app later this year, which will let users make in-store payments at any terminal that accepts Maestro contactless... More
Famoco raises €4m in financing round
French NFC device maker Famoco has secured €4m in a financing round led by Hi Inov... More
Semble adds Snapper public transport payments to mobile wallet
Users of New Zealand’s NFC mobile wallet Semble will be able to pay for public transport using the app through a partnership with prepaid transit card provider Snapper... More
France’s Teleshopping network tunes into PowaTag mobile payments
More than 400,000 viewers of France’s largest television shopping network will soon be able to buy products featured on the TV channel by holding up their smartphone to the screen to scan audio tags that will then redirect them to the item’s online page where they can make a purchase using their stored payment information... More
Fingerprint sensor market to grow at 17% CAGR
The fingerprint sensor market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17% between 2015 and 2020, research from MarketsandMarkets has found, with its value projected to reach US$14.5bn by 2020 from $5.5bn in 2014... More
McDonald’s to pilot mobile order and pay in China
McDonald’s is to begin piloting a mobile ordering and payment service in China in the third quarter of this year, with the aim of speeding payments and to meet consumer demand... More
Lloyds Bank authenticates customers with contactless ‘tap to bank’ service
Lloyds Bank is testing a ‘tap to bank’ service that lets its mobile banking app users tap their contactless debit card against their NFC phone to authenticate themselves during the mobile banking registration process... More
Europeans make more than 1bn Visa contactless transactions in 12 months
More than one billion contactless transactions worth in excess of €12.6bn have been made by Visa cardholders across Europe in the past 12 months, research from Visa Europe has found, with its customers spending €1.6bn using their contactless cards in March 2015 alone — a three-fold increase compared to the same month in 2014... More
Apple Pay UK launch set for July 14?
Apple is reportedly planning to launch Apple Pay in the UK on July 14... More