UK transportation operator FirstGroup has installed Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons on buses in the city of Norwich to help deliver content and offers to passengers’ smartphones... More
Ugo, an open NFC mobile wallet developed by Canadian banks President’s Choice Financial and TD Bank Group, is now available to customers of all three major Canadian carriers who own one of a range of supported BlackBerry 10 and Android NFC devices... More
Japanese startup TenTen Technologies is to offer retailers USB-based Bluetooth beacons that plug into POS terminals and vending machines so that rewards can be issued automatically to users of the company’s mobile app when they make a purchase... More
Motorola has unveiled Motorola Keylink, a US$24.99 smart keyfob that uses Bluetooth Low Energy to enable iOS and Android device owners to track down their smartphone or their keys if they misplace them... More
United Airlines is to install more than 6,000 iPads across Terminal C of Newark Liberty International Airport to enable members of the airline’s MileagePlus reward scheme to use their award miles to pay for food, beverages and other airport amenities... More
A white paper examining the attitudes of consumers to using smartwatches and other wearables for payments, ticketing and other applications is now available to download from the NFC World+ Knowledge Centre... More
The National Bank of Poland has given the go-ahead for the launch of Blik, a mobile payments service backed by six Polish banks that lets customers make payments in stores and online, withdraw cash from ATMs and send P2P transfers with their mobile phones... More
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons that use energy harvesting technology to avoid the need to change batteries have been installed by Japan Airlines (JAL) at 13 major Japanese airports to provide users of its JAL Countdown mobile app with “real-time departure, gate and other timely information”... More
Keyssa, a US startup backed by US$47m in funding from investors that include Intel, Samsung and Dolby Family Ventures and chaired by Nest founder Tony Fadell, has unveiled Kiss Connectivity, a solid-state embedded connector that can be used to transfer data between two devices at up to six gigabits per second. More
Australian carrier Optus has teamed up with Visa and Heritage Bank to launch an NFC mobile payment service that lets customers load up to A$500 into a prepaid account and then make payments at any Visa contactless POS terminal... More
EcoCash, Africa’s second largest mobile money provider with 3.7m users, is to offer customers in Zimbawe a MasterCard debit card linked to their EcoCash wallet... More
US carrier mobile payments venture Softcard has unveiled Tappy, a mascot designed by the company behind The Muppets that will be used initially in an online advertising blitz reported to be valued at US$1.5m. More
Visa will not charge a fee to card issuers making use of its tokenization service until at least the end of 2015 and may or may not charge a separate fee for the service in the future, CEO Charles Scharf has revealed at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2014 Banking & Financial Services Conference... More
Waiters in a Paris restaurant have been equipped with mobile phones that let them take orders on the go — and smartwatches that let bartenders and kitchen staff alert them when an order is ready to be served, avoiding delays and improving service times. More
Korean internet and messaging giant Daum Kakao has launched BankWalletKakao, a mobile wallet service provided in partnership with 16 Korean banks and Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearing Institute (KFTC)... More
Samsung has unveiled Proximity, a location-based marketing platform that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons and works in a similar way to Apple’s iBeacon system — but without the need for consumers to be persuaded to download a marketer’s own app to access the service... More
MasterCard is working with Visa to create a new authentication standard for online payments that will gradually replace the 3D Secure protocol with “invisible authentication”, far fewer prompts for passwords and support for a range of biometric technologies... More
McDonald’s sees accepting NFC mobile payments as part of its on-going customer service improvement remit, the fast food giant’s Anja Carroll has told NFC World+... More
NFC-on-microSD pioneer DeviceFidelity has been acquired by Kili Technology, a payments processing solution provider which launched an mPOS “solution-on-a-chip” range last month... More
PARTNER NEWS: Host card emulation (HCE) specialist SimplyTapp has closed a US$6m Series B funding round... More