Apple has added a further 24 financial institutions to its list of participating banks and credit unions, taking the total number of card issuers it works with to more than 240... More
- Apple Pay users in the US to get buy now pay later option with iOS 16
- BIS reports on CBDCs in emerging markets
- Moroccan bank launches biometric payment card
- US digital bank introduces contactless payments rings
- Riksbank completes digital currency payments pilot
Nearly half of payment cards shipped in 2014 were contactless
Contactless technology was built into more than 42% of smart payment cards shipped in 2014, up from 37% in 2013, the Smart Payment Association has revealed... More
Barclaycard’s bPay band set for relaunch
Barclaycard is to shut down its first generation bPay prepaid contactless wristband at the end of the month and will launch “a newly designed wristband that’s lighter, slimmer and comes in a choice of colours… in a couple of months”. More
Home Depot to accept Apple Pay in 2,000 stores
US retail giant Home Depot is planning to offer Apple Pay at its more than 2,000 stores, a rollout that would make it the largest retailer yet to accept the mobile payments service — though a deal with Apple is not yet in place... More
O2 buys out Weve partners and drops mobile payment plans
O2, one of the three UK mobile network operators that formed the mobile commerce joint venture Weve three years ago, has bought out partners EE and Vodafone to operate the brand as a wholly-owned subsidiary — and has confirmed to NFC World that it has abandoned Weve’s mobile payment ambitions. More
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Tattoos confound Apple Watch wrist detection, making Apple Pay “unusable”
Apple Watch owners with tattooed wrists have been reporting that their smartwatches are not functioning properly as the LED-based heart monitor built into the devices experiences difficulty detecting that the watch is being worn — an issue which impacts the use of Apple Pay among other features such as receiving notifications, placing phone calls and using some applications. More
84% of banks and retailers plan to invest in mobile payment technology
The “overwhelming majority” of financial institutions and retailers are currently investing or planning to invest in new payment technologies within the next 18 to 24 months, with online (86%) and mobile payment technologies (84%) topping the list, a survey by payments provider ACI and IT consultants Ovum has found. More
92% of UK mobile users to make a mobile payment in 2015
More than 31m UK mobile users (92%) will make a payment using their mobile device in 2015, multichannel sales specialist Oxygen8 has found... More
Chip and PIN faces slow take-up in US, says Forrester
EMV payments on plastic cards won’t achieve broad adoption in the US until 2020, Forrester Research predicts, due to the rise of “more secure” mobile and contactless payment alternatives... More
Yandex offers mobile payments at 1,300 Ukraine fuel stations
Ukrainian drivers can now pay for fuel at more than 1,300 outlets across the country using a mobile payment service launched by Russian internet company Yandex, in partnership with PrivatBank and MasterCard. More
Tencent’s mobile OS to offer payments
Chinese internet giant Tencent has released a mobile operating system that is set to include mobile payments functionality... More
Samsung Pay could work on smartwatches
Samsung managing director Park Jin-young hinted during the company’s first quarter earnings call that the forthcoming Samsung Pay system may also work with its smartwatches... More
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MCX appoints interim CEO after Best Buy announces support for Apple Pay
MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson has left the retailer-led consortium to “pursue other opportunities” in the same week it was announced that founder member Best Buy will roll out support for rival mobile payments service Apple Pay later this year. More
MCX confirms it will launch CurrentC this summer in a “mid-sized market”
Retailer owned mobile payments consortium MCX has confirmed to NFC World that it will launch its CurrentC mobile wallet in an unspecified mid-sized US market soon, following the announcement that founder member Best Buy will begin to accept rival mobile payments service Apple Pay in its stores later this year. More
MCX member Best Buy to accept Apple Pay across the US
US retail giant Best Buy, a founder member of retailer-led consortium MCX which requires members to exclusively support its own yet-to-launch mobile payments service, has announced that it will accept Apple Pay NFC payments in its stores “later this year”. More
Discover to add support for Apple Pay
Apple Pay will be supported by all major US credit card companies “beginning this fall” after Discover announced plans to join Visa, MasterCard and American Express in letting its cardholders add cards and make NFC payments using the mobile payments service. More
M-Pesa and MTN Mobile Money join up
Users of Vodafone’s M-Pesa and MTN Group’s MTN Mobile Money services in east Africa will soon be able to transfer money to each other following an agreement between the region’s two biggest mobile network operators... More
Starbucks processes 8m mobile payments every week
Coffee chain Starbucks has 16 million active users of its mobile app who are making eight million mobile payments a week, equalling nearly 19% of all transactions in US stores, president and COO Kevin Johnson has revealed, and the company is preparing to roll out its successful Mobile Order and Pay service across the US, UK and Canada before the end of 2015. More
Forecast: 100m Apple Pay-capable phones in US by 2020
Some 100m Apple Pay-capable smartphones will be available in the US in 2020, up from 53m this year, according to Mercator Advisory Group. The company is also forecasting that the future of the mobile payment service will be bright, despite usage problems that surfaced among early adopters attempting to make an in-store purchase using the service. More
Vodafone Netherlands adds credit card to Wallet
Vodafone customers in the Netherlands can now make NFC payments with a mobile version of a credit card... More