Australia’s Transport for NSW has introduced Opal Connect, a new service that aims to become “a one stop shop for all transport transactions and information, whether it is public transport, rideshare, taxis, parking and even tolling”... More
Mastercard has signed up four WHSmith retail brands for Pay by Bank (PbBa), a strong customer authentication-compliant payments service that uses customers’ mobile banking apps and the UK’s faster payments system to let online retailers accept payments direct from shoppers’ bank accounts... More
PARTNER NEWS: Visa has announced that it has now completed its acquisition from Rambus of the company’s payments and ticketing businesses — formerly known as Bell ID and Ecebs... More
A new bus ticketing system that lets passengers use face recognition to make hands-free payments for their tickets has entered pilot testing in Kazakhstan’s capital city of Nur-Sultan... More
Shoppers at 30 US supermarkets operated by Netherlands-based retail giant Ahold Delhaize will be able to use their mobile phone to scan items as they shop and then self-checkout and pay by the end of this year... More
American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa have gone live with an online checkout service that lets merchants add a single buy button to their sites to accept payments from any of the networks’ cardholders — without them first needing to create an account with the merchant or enter detailed payment data... More
The Australian state of Queensland has begun the first of a series of pilots ahead of the rollout of its A$371m (US$249m) Smart Ticketing system, due to go live in 2022. A one-month pilot of new express ticketing gates is taking place at Brisbane’s Central Station More
Travellers in Russia’s capital can now use China UnionPay’s Quickpass contactless cards or an NFC payment app connected to a Quickpass card to pay their fares at 150 Moscow Metro stations, China’s Xinhua news agency reports... More
PARTNER NEWS: Cilab’s ci230 high-speed testing suite has made it possible for self-service payments leader Invenco to significantly improve the time it takes to develop, test and bring to market EMV-compliant NFC payment terminals for its customers, chief engineer Chris Henry has told NFC World... More
Apple Pay “has caught the eye of EU antitrust investigators, who have asked payment companies for feedback on the service,” regulatory risk specialist MLex reports... More
The European Banking Authority (EBA) has issued a new Opinion that provides the European payments industry with an EU-wide additional 15 months to comply with strong customer authentication (SCA) requirements for online ecommerce transactions... More
Samsung’s NFC phone-based contactless payments acceptance service is now live in Canada and is to be introduced globally “starting in 2020”, the company has announced... More
A new deal between Google and Cubic Transportation Systems is set to make it possible for public transport users in a number of major cities around the world to use Google Pay to add their transit card to their NFC mobile phone... More
Rail passengers are now choosing to use ‘smart tickets’ for half of all the journeys they make, the UK’s Rail Delivery Group (RTG) has revealed, paving the way for the introduction of a wide array of innovative new fare structures... More
Public transportation operators from across the US state of Ohio have gone live with EZfare, a new service that lets passengers use a single mobile ticketing app to buy tickets and passes from any of the participating operators... More
Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe and Mercado Pago have followed PayPal in pulling out of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project. The moves mean that PayU is now the only payments company to still be listed as a founding member of the Libra Association. More
The UK’s Royal Mint has unveiled a payment card that is produced entirely from 18-karat gold and comes with “no spending limit”... More
Madrid public transportation operator EMT has announced plans to run two next-generation transportation payments pilots... More
A major investigation into US consumers’ attitudes to mobile payments has found that concerns over how well they would be protected against loss should an issue arise is now the major barrier to widespread adoption of the technology... More
The introduction of the Japanese government’s Cashless Japan initiative, which provides consumers with cashback incentives when they use a card or mobile phone to make a purchase, has led to a significant upswing in mobile payments adoption, according to reports from a number of merchants and mobile payments providers... More
