The Chengyang District of the city of Qingdao has become the first in China to use a new WeChat service to issue government vouchers directly to residents’ mobile phones, in a bid to boost consumer spending as the Chinese economy begins to recover from Covid-19... More
UnionPay, Huawei and National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) have launched a mobile payments service that lets owners of Huawei and Honor NFC phones use a single mobile wallet app to pay at any merchant equipped to accept either contactless or QR code payments... More
Chinese mobile payments giant Alipay has announced a three-year plan to evolve its current offering into an open financial services and digital lifestyle platform — and has set a target of attracting 40m service providers by 2030... More
Consumers will use payments services provided by smartphone makers and other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to make transactions valued at more than US$1tn a year by 2024, up from US$333bn in 2020, according to Juniper Research... More
Global contactless transaction values will reach nearly US$6tn in 2024, up from US$2tn today, Juniper Research forecasts... More
Apple Pay revenue and transactions have “more than doubled year-over-year with the run rate exceeding 15bn transactions a year,” Apple CEO Tim Cook has revealed... More
Italy’s national postal service provider has added QR code-based payments to its mobile payments app, to support the country’s transition from cash to digital payments... More
The Payment & Clearing Association of China (PCAC) has published a set of guidelines that regulate how payments providers making use of face recognition to process payments at the point of sale (POS) should manage the protection of consumer data... More
Consumers purchasing premium Sicilian blood oranges will be able to track the provenance of the product using a new system that combines NFC tags and sensors placed on each box of oranges with a blockchain-based tracking system... More
Huawei starts its mobile wallet service Huawei Pay in Pakistan — Technology Times — “Huawei has launched its mobile wallet service Huawei Pay in Pakistan in cooperation with UnionPay International and National Bank of Pakistan, making it the fourth market where Huawei Pay has been made available, following China, Russia and Hong Kong.”
A survey of more than 150,000 Chinese digital payment users has found that two-thirds have come across deceptive QR codes and 40.8% have had their codes surreptitiously forwarded to other people in the past year... More
WeChat Pay operator Tencent is working with China UnionPay on the adoption of a common QR code that will allow merchants to use the same code to accept payments from both companies’ mobile payment services, Caixin Global reports... More
QR code scams rise in China, putting e-payment security in spotlight — South China Morning Post — “By replacing legitimate merchants’ codes with malevolent copies, fraudsters can gain access to consumers’ data and even raid their bank accounts… According to one senior official and technology expert, almost a quarter of Trojans — malicious programs disguised as benign software – and other viruses are transmitted though QR codes.”
China’s central bank likely to pilot digital currency in cities of Shenzhen and Suzhou — Coindesk — “The People’s Bank of China is said to be preparing to launch pilots for its digital currency in at least two major cities. The tests are likely to include the participation of state-owned partners. These comprise the ‘Big Four’ commercial banks — the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China — and three telcos: China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom.”
China’s subways embrace face-scan payments despite privacy concerns — AsiaOne — “Since the service began trials in September, nearly 200,000 commuters in Zhengzhou have elected to authorise face-scan payments using a local metro service app… While Zhengzhou is among dozens of Chinese cities to introduce such trials, it is the first to deploy the service across its entire subway network.”
Government asks SenseTime to lead plans for national facial recognition standards — Caixin Global — “The working group, which also includes Tencent, Xiaomi, and Ant Financial, is overseen by the National Information Technology Standardization Technical Committee (NITS), which is in turn affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It will also promote the further formulation of facial recognition standards at an international level.”
China mobile payments maintain rapid growth in Q3 — Xinhua — “Banks in the country processed 27.27bn mobile payment transactions in the period, up 61.05% year on year, said the People’s Bank of China in a report. The value of these transactions increased by 31.52% from the same period of last year to 86.11tn yuan (about US$12.2tn). Meanwhile, online payment transactions by the non-banking institutions were valued at 63.99tn yuan in Q3, up 23.04% year on year.”
Tencent, the owner of Chinese mobile payments provider WeChat Pay, has announced that it is working with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and JCB to enable cardholders to connect their payment cards to WeChat Pay and then use the platform to make mobile payments when visiting China... More
Tourists visiting China can now use a version of Alipay designed specifically for international travellers to make mobile payments during their trip, Alipay has announced... More
Pay with your face system coming to Canada, but not everyone is on board — Yahoo Finance — “Ryan Li, Foodymart’s executive manager, sees the technology as an opportunity to grow his company’s business by attracting new customers, as well as cutting down on checkout times. Li also said between 50% and 60% of Foodymart customers have lived in China, and he expects most of them have previously interacted with a facial recognition payment system.”
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