The number of US consumers who use their smartphone to scan QR codes to make contactless payments and for a wide range of other use cases such as scanning codes in print publications, on restaurant menus and in retail outlets will rise from 83.4 million in 2022 to 99.5 million by 2025, according to an Insider Intelligence forecast... More
Just over a third of UK consumers now have a digital wallet (34%), but that proportion rises to more than two thirds among 18-34 year olds (64%) compared with just 18% among 54-65 year olds, a survey has found... More
More than 500,000 students at 100 higher education facilities across the USA have now added an NFC-enabled digital campus card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay on their NFC smartphone or smartwatch, according to campus card provider Transact... More
Computer users will soon be able to charge a cable-free mouse using NFC simply by placing it on an NFC wireless charging mouse mat... More
Google has begun rolling out a multipurpose digital wallet that enables users to store, use and present digital credentials such as identity cards and health passes as well as payment cards, transit and event tickets and hotel keys in 39 countries across Europe, the Americas and Asia... More
US-based tequila brand Otaca is to add NFC tags that enable purchasers to authenticate their purchase, access information about the brand and place further orders by tapping the tag in the bottle cap with their Apple or Android NFC device to more than 50,000 bottles of its Reposado tequila... More
US law firm Hagens Berman has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple alleging that, by preventing mobile wallets other than Apple Pay using the NFC chip in iPhone and Apple Watch to enable contactless payments, the company is in breach of federal antitrust law... More
Supermarket chain Aldi is trialling its first checkout-free contactless store in continental Europe in the Dutch city of Utrecht, enabling customers to enter the store by scanning an app, selecting items from the shelves and then leaving without needing to scan their purchases or use a conventional checkout... More
The central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are to develop an interoperable cross-border payments system that will enable residents of each country to use their mobile banking app to make QR code-based payments for goods and services when visiting any of the other territories... More
Luxury perfume brand Byredo is to let collectors create a customised scent in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT) using digital ingredients that will then be produced as a limited edition physical perfume and supplied in individually numbered bottles with an NFC tag that connects to the NFT... More
Food cart service provider FrostHead has provided its sellers at the Lollapalooza outdoor music festival in Sweden with the ability to accept contactless payments for food, drinks and earplugs using a software application that they can download onto a standard Android NFC smartphone... More
The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Apple a patent for an “electronic device having sealed button biometric sensing system” that would enable users to unlock a device, authorise transactions and access apps by verifying their identity with their fingerprint on a wearable device such as an Apple Watch... More
Taiwanese visitors to Okinawa prefecture in Japan will soon be able to make contactless payments directly settled in New Taiwan Dollars for small-value purchases using their EasyCard stored-value smart payments and transit card... More
Merchants in the USA including fashion retailers Vince, Burton, G-Star and Scotch & Soda have begun enabling staff to accept in-store contactless payments on iPhones using Apple’s Tap to Pay software point of sale (sPOS) feature... More
US-based cosmetics brand Too Faced has added NFC tags to 100,000 samples of its Maximum Plump lip gloss, enabling recipients to access a special landing page and register for a discount on future purchases by scanning the tag with their Apple or Android NFC smartphone... More
More than nine in ten public transport users worldwide expect transit services to offer contactless fare payment options (91%) and just under half prefer to make contactless payments for their transit fares (45%), according to Visa’s 2022 Future of Urban mobility survey... More
The Covid-19 pandemic has driven a “global surge” in digital payments with two-thirds of adults worldwide now making or receiving digital payments, rising from 35% in 2014 to 57% in 2021 in developing economies and from 88% in 2014 to 95% in 2021 in high-income economies, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex 2021 database... More
Dutch bank ING is to pilot a payments feature that uses ultra wideband (UWB) technology to enable consumers to make peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile payments to another user’s smartphone without needing to find, enter or exchange personal data such as their email address or phone number... More
An international team of researchers has developed flexible NFC extenders that enable the wearer to interact with NFC tags at a greater distance than has previously been possible, opening up the potential for hands-free NFC interactions in use cases ranging from exchanging contact details at a distance, entering a building while carrying shopping bags and accessing online instructions while carrying out physical exercise... More
Singapore’s Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) is trialling a contactless biometric immigration clearance system that enables travellers arriving in the country from Malaysia by car to scan their passport and verify their identity with a face and iris scan without needing to leave their vehicle... More