PARTNER NEWS: Visitors to the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games are paying for journeys on buses, ferries and trains across the city with NFC wristbands provided by digital security giant Gemalto and public transportation ticketing operator RioCard. More
Brazil
Brazilian mobile bank launches with biometric authentication
Brazilian consumers can now sign up to mobile and online only bank Neon by taking a selfie with their mobile phone... More
Samsung Pay to launch in Brazil this month
Samsung Pay will begin rolling out across Brazil on July 19, Samsung has confirmed, making it the first market in South America to introduce the mobile payment service. It will be supported by both MasterCard and Visa as well as Banco do Brasil, Brasil Pré-Pagos, Caixa, Porto Seguro, and Santander. More
Samsung Pay launches in Puerto Rico
Samsung Pay has gone live in Puerto Rico with support from Banco Popular, the country’s largest bank. The service is supported by MasterCard and Visa and is available from mobile network operators AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Claro. More
Swatch Bellamy launches in Brazil in time for Rio 2016
Swiss luxury watchmaker Swatch has launched its Swatch Bellamy NFC payments watch in Brazil in partnership with Visa in time for the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. More
Gemalto blog explores potential of NFC wearables at sporting events
PARTNER NEWS: A new blog post from digital security giant Gemalto explores the role of NFC-enabled wearables at sporting events and their potential to banish so-called “paper ticket syndrome”... More
Visa to supply athletes with NFC payment rings at Rio 2016
Athletes at this year’s Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be given an NFC payments ring linked to a Visa account that will let them make purchases by tapping their hand against contactless terminals. More
Swatch Bellamy to launch with Cornèr Bank in mid-June
Cornèr Bank has signed an agreement with Swiss luxury watchmaker Swatch to make its Cornèrcard available for payments on the Swatch Bellamy NFC watch from mid-June... More
MasterCard to support Apple Pay in Canada?
MasterCard could begin supporting Apple Pay in Canada this year, according to a MacRumors report... 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
PayPal to add NFC payments to Android app
An upcoming version of PayPal’s Android app is to bring with it NFC payments capability, the online payment giant has announced at Mobile World Congress... More
Samsung Pay hits 5m users and is set for global expansion in 2016
Samsung Pay now has approximately five million users in South Korea and the US who have processed more than $500m through the mobile payment service in the first six months since its launch. The service is due to be rolled out in China next month, Samsung has revealed, followed by a global expansion to Australia, Brazil, Singapore, Spain, the UK and Canada later in the year. More
Swatch and Visa to take Bellamy smartwatch to Rio Olympics
Visitors to this summer’s Rio 2016 Olympics will be able to use luxury watchmaker Swatch’s Bellamy NFC smartwatch to pay for event passes, according to the Financial Times... More
Samsung Pay to go live in Spain with CaixaBank
Customers of Spain’s CaixaBank will be the first in the country to be able to use Samsung Pay, following a partnership between the bank and Samsung that will see the mobile payment service added as an option to CaixaBank’s host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payment app. More
Ford enters the mobile payments market with FordPay
Ford car owners will soon be able to make transactions from their vehicle for services such as car parking using FordPay, a virtual wallet that stores payment details on their mobile phone. The feature is part of the FordPass platform which aims to offer drivers more mobility options and also includes merchant rewards. More
Samsung Pay heads to Australia, Brazil and Singapore
Samsung is to launch its Samsung Pay mobile payment service in Australia, Brazil and Singapore, the company’s Tim Baxter has announced during a keynote at the CES show in Las Vegas. The service will also be available on the Samsung Gear S2 classic smartwatch from early this year, starting in the US. More
Swatch confirms payment watch launch in US, Switzerland and Brazil
Swiss luxury watchmaker Swatch has confirmed that it has signed an agreement with Visa and Visa Europe to enable eligible cardholders in the US, Switzerland and Brazil to tap and pay with the Swatch Bellamy watch. More
Rio Olympics to get NFC wristbands?
Visa has shown off a proof of concept NFC wristband in San Francisco, demonstrating how it could be used for making payments at the Rio 2016 Olympics next year... More
SumUp expands to Sweden
European mPOS company SumUp has launched its mobile card acceptance solution in Sweden, expanding its footprint to 14 countries including Germany, the UK and Brazil... More
Visa signs up 2,300 financial institutions for Visa Token Service
More than 2,300 financial institutions and banking partners have now signed up for Visa’s tokenization service with international expansion set to happen “in the fall”, Visa has revealed during a third quarter earnings call... More