Bank-owned Nordic mobile payment providers Vipps in Norway, MobilePay in Denmark and Pivo in Finland are to merge and will create a single digital wallet that consumers can use in all three countries, as well as for cross-border payments... More
Scientists at Northwestern and George Washington universities in the US have developed a wireless, battery-free implantable pacemaker that uses NFC to harvest energy from an external antenna and dissolves after it is no longer needed to control a patient’s heartbeat... More
The average number of digital payments made for purchases from vending machines in the US grew steadily during 2019, finally exceeded those made with cash in April 2020 and continued to increase over the course of 2020, a new study shows... More
Australia’s Eftpos national debit card system has launched a digital identity exchange solution that enables consumers to share personal information held by trusted digital ID providers in a wide range of use cases, from opening an online account and making online payments to accessing government services or providing proof of age... More
Utah Community Credit Union (UCCU) is to become the first financial institution in the US state to let its customers use Utah’s mobile driving licence (mDL) as a legal form of identification for all banking transactions... More
Visa is to launch its Visa Installments payments service in Canada, enabling consumers to choose to pay for purchases made using their credit card in smaller instalments over a specified period of time... More
Customers at Kio Kukhnya fast food outlets in the Russian city of St Petersburg can now pay for their food and beverages at payment terminals equipped with biometric pay-with-a-glance technology... More
Moviegoers at the Nowe Horyzonty Cinema in the Polish city of Wroclaw can now pay for their tickets with their eyes via a biometric payments system that makes use of iris recognition technology... More
Customers of Hong Kong-based virtual bank Mox can now apply for an “all-in-one” numberless payments card that they can choose to use as either a debit or a credit card whenever they make a transaction... More
Some 65.5% of US consumers would pay for a biometric credit card that has a built-in fingerprint reader for authenticating payments, according to a survey of American credit card users... More
Passengers travelling on metro, rail, bus, tram and boat services in the Swedish capital of Stockholm will soon be able to use an EMV white label card issued by the city’s Storstockholm Lokaltrafik (SL) transit authority to make EMV contactless payments for their fares... More
Consumers from Thailand can now make instant cross-border QR code-based payments for goods and services to merchants in Malaysia from their mobile payments app using a service being launched by the Bank of Thailand and Bank Negara Malaysia... More
Customers of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and the Agricultural Bank of China can now exchange cash for digital yuan and vice versa at more than 3,000 ATMs across Beijing, China, according to a report by the Xinhua news agency... More
Gamblers at Resorts World Las Vegas in Nevada in the US will soon be able to purchase gambling chips for table games including blackjack, baccarat and roulette, as well as place contactless cashless bets at slot machines, directly from a digital wallet on their mobile phone... More
Guests staying at Virgin Hotels in four US cities can now securely verify their identity, check in and receive a mobile room key via an app on their iOS or Android device before arriving at their hotel... More
Some 17.3 million people or nearly a third (32%) of adult consumers in the UK were registered to use their smartphone or smart watch to make mobile payments in stores by the end of 2020, a “significant” increase of 7.4 million people compared with 2019, according to UK Finance... More
Retailers and other small business owners in six US cities will soon be able to accept contactless payments on an Android NFC smartphone using Visa’s software-only Tap to Phone solution... More
China Construction Bank (CCB) is piloting a biometric ‘hard wallet’ smart card that lets customers store digital yuan and authenticate payments made using the central bank digital currency (CBDC) with their fingerprint... More
Customers of BBVA Mexico can now apply for a ‘blank’ biometric credit card that enables them to authenticate payments with their fingerprint... More
Chinese consumers can now open digital yuan wallets using different levels of customer identification depending on the transaction and balance limits they require and can activate wallets “with the lowest authority” with just their mobile phone number in line with the “principle of controllable anonymity”, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has revealed... More