Commuters on Dublin Bus and Iarnród Éireann rail services may soon be able to pay for transport with a tap of an NFC device under plans put forward by public transport operator CIÉ... More
Archive: News in brief
Mobeam update brings loyalty to POS scanners
Mobeam has updated its mobile coupon and offer app Beep’nGo to let customers use retail loyalty cards, gift cards and barcode coupons on their smartphone at checkout scanners for the first time... More
Apple Pay glitch prevents users adding Visa cards
Apple has now resolved a service outage that meant users were unable to add credit cards and debit cards to Apple Pay for almost seven hours today... More
Mobile savings club scoops innovation award
PARTNER NEWS: Mahindra Comviva and mobile money and payments provider EcoCash have won the Best Mobile Innovation prize at the sixth Kalahari Awards for the EcoCash Savings Club... More
Visa offers mobile card controls
Consumers will soon be able to stop transactions taking place if their card is lost or stolen, set spending controls and receive transaction alerts on their smartphone via a new service launched by Visa... More
Kiwis warm to mobile payments and biometrics
More than four in ten New Zealanders (41%) would consider using NFC mobile payments today and 44% believe mobile payments will be the next thing to take off, followed by biometrics/facial recognition/fingerprints (21%) and wearable technology (18%), research from MasterCard reveals... More
Apple Pay reaches mobile app inflection point
Apple Pay has seen an acceleration in mobile app acceptance across the US, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who calls it an “inflection point” in a recent investor note reported by Quartz... More
3bn loyalty cards will move to mobile by 2020
More than 3bn loyalty cards will operate as mobile-only or will be integrated into mobile apps by 2020, up from 1.4bn last year, Juniper Research predicts... More
Super Bowl fans explore Bay Area with BLE beacons
Attendees at Super Bowl 50 over the weekend were notified of related events, points of interest and prizes on their smartphones via a mobile app and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons installed in locations across the San Francisco Bay Area... More
Apple Pay adds 32 banks in the US
Apple has added a further 32 banks and credit unions to its list of Apple Pay supporting financial institutions in the US... More
White paper lays out NFC solutions for in-home healthcare providers
A five-page white paper that explains the advantages of NFC for in-home healthcare providers is now available to download from the NFC World+ Knowledge Centre... More
FitPay closes $3.1m round led by G&D
Wearable payments provider FitPay has closed a US$3.1m seed funding round led by Giesecke & Devrient (G&D)... More
Samsung looks into vein authentication
A patent filed by Samsung describes how a sensor on a smartwatch or other wearable device could authenticate identity by reading the user’s vein structure... More
Apple Pay available in more than 2m US retail locations
Apple Pay is now available in more than 2m US retail locations, according to Bloomberg, with the Crate & Barrel, Chick-fil-A and Au Bon Pain chains also due to roll out the service soon... More
Apple begins selling Square contactless reader
Apple has begun selling mobile POS provider Square’s US$49 contactless readers in its US stores as well as online... More
Viber to add money transfers to messaging app
The more than 664m users of messaging app Viber will soon be able to send money to friends and family from anywhere in the world thanks to an integration with money transfer network Western Union... More
European Central Bank to develop P2P service
The European Central Bank is working on a system that would let consumers transfer money to each other based on a phone number or email address... More
Charity goes contactless for World Cancer Day
UK consumers can make a £2 donation to Cancer Research UK by tapping their contactless card against small portable readers being launched in London, Glasgow, Liverpool and Leeds as part of today’s World Cancer Day fundraising campaign... More
Amazon Echo adds Domino’s pizza orders
US customers of pizza chain Domino’s can now speak their orders into Amazon’s Echo voice-driven home shopping device, which is supported by virtual assistant Alexa... More
GlobalPlatform updates NFC SIM spec
Standards body GlobalPlatform has extended the scope of UICC Configuration, its implementation guide for deploying GlobalPlatform Card Specification v2.3 within the mobile services sector and managing the secure, over-the-air delivery of new services... More