Bus passengers in Malta can now make on-board contactless payments for their fares on more of the island’s busier routes as Malta Public Transport moves towards implementing a fully integrated contactless system on all services in 2021... More
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Nordic countries record surge in contactless payments during pandemic
The proportion of in-store purchases made using contactless cards in the Nordic countries has risen from 57% in January this year to 75% in late October, an increase “in part driven by concerns around the potential spread of Covid-19,” regional payments processor Nets reports... More
Google Pay to launch mobile-first bank accounts in the USA in 2021
Consumers in the USA will be able to open mobile-first checking and saving accounts with 11 banks and credit unions from within Google Pay from 2021, Google has revealed in a blog post that also announces the launch of a redesigned version of the Google Pay app for both Android and iOS... More
Matatu minibuses pilot contactless fare payments in Nairobi
Passengers using Matatu minibus services across the Kenyan capital of Nairobi can now make contactless payments for their journeys from their M-Pesa mobile wallet... More
American Express adds instant digital card provisioning for Apple Pay
American Express cardholders in the USA can now add their card to their Apple Pay wallet via the card network’s website as soon as their application has been approved, removing the need to wait for a physical card to arrive or to manually input their card details... More
US credit union pilots dynamic CVV codes on mobile devices
Members of Michigan State University Federal Credit Union (MSUFCU) in the USA are to take part in a three-month pilot scheme to test the use of dynamic CVV codes when making online or in-app purchases with their credit card... More
Survey: 4 in 10 US consumers open to receiving offers via NFC, QR and SMS
More than a third (38%) of US consumers intending to shop at brick-and-mortar retail outlets on Black Friday and Cyber Monday say they are interested in discounts and offers made via out-of-home (OOH) advertising signage that uses QR codes, NFC and SMS text messages, according to a new survey... More
Huawei Pay goes live in Malaysia
Malaysian consumers with compatible Huawei smartphones can now use Huawei Pay to make NFC mobile payments with an ICBC UnionPay credit card stored in their mobile wallet... More
Survey finds 7 in 10 Swedish consumers are interested in having a biometric payment card
Some 70% of Swedish consumers would be interested in having a biometric payment card so they can make high-value transactions without having to touch a point-of-sale (POS) terminal, a new survey reveals — and 59% would be willing to pay a monthly fee for one... More
Google Pay expands to 10 extra countries in Europe
Google Pay has gone live in Austria, Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal and Romania with support for Mastercard and Visa cards issued by participating banks and card issuers... More
RBR: 100m merchants worldwide to accept card payments by end 2025
The number of outlets worldwide accepting card payments will reach nearly 100m by the end of 2025, an increase driven by government initiatives to promote cashless payments and by an acceleration in the move to contactless payments during the Covid-19 pandemic, research from RBR predicts... More
TfL to integrate Oyster and contactless fare payment systems
Transport for London (TfL) is planning to integrate the back office systems for its Oyster transit card and contactless fare payment services as well as replace validation readers across its entire transport network from 2025... More
JCB reports 30% rise in contactless payments volumes
The number of contactless transactions made by some 140 million JCB cardholders across 24 markets increased by more than 30% between July 2019 and July this year, the Tokyo-based payments network reports in a new white paper... More
Standard Bank to support contactless payments in 15 African countries
Standard Bank is supporting the mass rollout of contactless cards across Africa as the financial services group reports an accelerated increase in the use of tap and pay across the continent... More
Regional Transit Service integrates transit tickets into mobility-as-a-service app
Passengers using Regional Transit Service (RTS) buses in the US city of Rochester can now plan their journeys, get real-time updates, connect to third-party mobility services and make tap-and-ride fare payments from within a single mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) app... More
Pandemic spurs half of US shoppers to try mobile contactless payments
More than half (53%) of today’s shoppers have used a mobile contactless payment option for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a survey by USA-based Inmar Intelligence... More
Facebook digital currency researchers publish ultra high-speed payments paper
A digital transaction settlement system being developed by researchers working on Facebook’s Novi cryptocurrency digital wallet app could support up to 160,000 transactions per second, “about 7x the peak transaction rate of the Visa payments network”, according to a paper published by the research team... More
Lebanon to issue digital currency in 2021
Banque du Liban, the central bank of Lebanon, is preparing to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC) next year, the bank’s governor Riad Salameh has told a meeting of the Lebanese Depositors Association... More
More than 500m iPhone users have now activated Apple Pay
The number of iPhone users globally that have activated Apple Pay has grown by 66m over the past year, from 441m in September 2019 to 507m in September 2020, according to a study published by Loup Ventures... More
China to maintain central database of all digital currency transactions
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will keep a database of all transactions made using the digital yuan, China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), according to China Daily... More