McDonald’s is set to roll out a new campaign for the 2014 Fifa World Cup using an augmented reality app to turn packaging and tables into virtual football games... More
Archive: Newswire
Juniper predicts 1.5bn mobile wallets in 2018
There will be more than 1.5billion mobile wallets in use around the world by 2018, according to a new forecast from Juniper Research, representing one in five handsets and up from one in 10 at the end of 2013... More
London taxi firm promotes app downloads with NFC and QR stickers
Radio Taxis, one of London’s biggest taxi operators, is promoting downloads of its mobile app by placing NFC and QR code stickers in its 2,500 vehicles... More
US sports venues to get interactive displays
Sports venue display provider Access Sports Media is to use Blue Bite’s mTag platform to add NFC, QR, SMS and geofencing capabilities to its more than 20,000 displays in 200 US sports venues... More
Safaricom reports on merchant adoption of mobile money at the point of sale
Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom has now signed up 122,000 merchants for Lipa na M-Pesa, a service launched in June 2013 that enables Kenyan consumers to use the funds stored in their M-Pesa mobile money account to pay for goods in stores... More
White paper sets out benefits of white label mobile payments
“Building a Foundation for Mobile Payment”, a white paper from Datacard, explains why banks and other card issuers must advance their mobile payments strategy quickly and demonstrates the benefits of taking a white-label approach to mobile payment platforms... More
TD Canada Trust launches NFC mobile payments with support from all three major carriers
TD Canada Trust, the retail banking arm of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, has become the first in Canada to offer an NFC mobile payment solution that is supported by the country’s three major wireless networks: Bell, Rogers and Telus... More
Dauntless sets out to track world’s food supply with NFC
A US startup is seeking funds for a service that tracks produce all the way from farm to supermarket shelf, ultimately letting consumers tap a tag on a bag of coffee to see the farm on which it was grown and trace its journey... More
Isis reports 20,000 new mobile wallet users a day
Isis saw its user adoption growth rate double last month and is now adding an average of 20,000 new users a day, Michael Abbott, CEO of the US carrier-led NFC venture, has revealed... More
RenRen lets social media users make friends with animated QR codes
Chinese social media site RenRen is giving users the ability to create a personal, animated QR code for their profile page, which they can use to let contacts add them quickly to their friends list... More
Australian bank tests beacons in branches
St George Bank is testing the use of Bluetooth LE technology to send a welcome message and personalised information directly to a customer’s iPhone when they enter a branch... More
Square uses digital receipts to create conversations between consumers and merchants
Mobile point-of-sale specialist Square has introduced a new service that “turns the receipt into a conversation channel”... More
Bertolli runs NFC marketing campaign in US stores
Bertolli Olive Oil is to use News America Marketing and Thinaire‘s SmartSource with NFC service to deliver recipes, videos and ingredients lists to shoppers while they are in the relevant aisle of a supermarket... More
Fidesmo unveils NFC ticketing service that stores multiple transit passes on one contactless card
Swedish startup Fidesmo has developed a service that lets NFC phone owners replace multiple, physical transport passes with a single contactless card... More
OMsignal launches biometric clothing that tracks the wearer’s health and fitness with BLE
A Canadian startup has introduced a range of smart sports shirts that monitor the wearer’s heart rate, breathing and movement and then use Bluetooth LE to send the collected data to their smartphone for real time analysis. More
UK shopping centre runs multi-retailer NFC marketing pilot
A shopping centre in Solihull, UK is piloting a service that lets shoppers access discounts and promotions from multiple retailers by tapping their phone against NFC-enabled posters displayed in the windows of participating stores... More
Brightwire: Apple signs mobile payments deal with China UnionPay
“Apple is likely to incorporate a near field communication (NFC) payment function in the next generation iPhone and has reached an agreement with China UnionPay on a mobile payment service,” investment newswire Brightwire reports, citing “a source close to the matter”... More
OTP Bank launches mobile payments in Hungary
Hungary’s OTP Bank has launched a mobile wallet that allows consumers to pay in stores by scanning a QR code placed next to the cash register... More
nTrust pilots Bluetooth payments in Canada
Canadian payments and money transfer provider nTrust has begun piloting a new mobile payments service that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons placed in stores to make wireless purchases... More
DNP to add invisible smart ink to printed media
Japan-based Dai Nippon Printing has signed a partnership deal with US startup T+ink, developer of an invisible conductive ink technology that can be used to let consumers interact with books, magazines, advertising, tickets, product packaging and other printed media using a smartphone or other mobile device... More