Google Wallet goes live in five new countries
Google Wallet is now available in Argentina, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Montenegro, bringing the total number of countries where the digital wallet is available to 66. More
Argentina
Brazil begins rollout of contactless mobile identity cards
Residents of six Brazilian states and the country’s Federal District can now generate a digital national identity card that they can store on their Apple or Android smartphone and use to verify their ID for multiple uses including accessing public services and contactless cross-border travel to other South American countries within the Mercosur region... More
Colombia to let citizens use digital ID for contactless cross-border travel in South America
Residents of Colombia will soon be able to use an updated version of their digital national identity card — known as La Cédula Digital Colombiana — stored on their Apple or Android smartphone as a passport when travelling to eight other South American countries... More
BIS reports on CBDCs in emerging markets
Providing a cash-like digital means of payment, increasing private digital payment services, supporting financial inclusion and achieving greater payment system efficiency are among the key motivations driving initiatives to develop central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in emerging market economies around the world, according to a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report... More
Apple Pay goes live in Argentina and Peru
Apple Pay has launched in Argentina and Peru with support for Mastercard and Visa cards issued by six banks in Argentina and five in Peru. It has confirmed the service is now live in both countries. More
More than one in three in-person payments in Latin America and the Caribbean are now contactless
More than a third of in-person payments made using Visa credentials across Latin America and the Caribbean in December 2021 were contactless (“close to 35%”), a two-fold increase on the same period in 2020, according to Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA)... More
BIS finds consumers worldwide are switching to digital and contactless payments at ‘unprecedented rate’
Consumers in key markets around the world have switched from physical cash to digital and contactless payment methods at “a rate unprecedented” since the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) launched its Red Book of payment and settlement statistics in 2004, BIS says... More
Apple Pay to launch in Argentina and Peru ‘soon’
Apple Pay is due to roll out in Argentina and Peru “soon”, according to the payments service’s Latin American website... More
eMarketer identifies top countries for mobile payments adoption
China remains the country with by far the highest mobile payments adoption rate, with 81.1% of smartphone owners making use of the technology, eMarketer reports... More
Visa Checkout heads to six new markets
Visa is expanding its online payment service to France, India, Ireland, Poland, Spain and the UK this year, taking the total footprint to 22 markets... More
Winery automates grape picking wages with NFC
A new system that uses NFC phones and RFID tags to track how many grapes each worker has harvested means Bodega Norton winery in Argentina now saves a day every week collating how much each worker has picked and what they should be paid. More
