Oberthur Technologies (OT) has teamed up with NFC mPOS services provider Mobeewave for Flying mPOS, a solution that will enable NFC devices equipped with Oberthur’s Pearl embedded secure element to be used as a mobile POS terminal — without the need for a separate dongle or other add-on... More
Archive: News in brief
TfL reports 12m contactless payments
More than 12m public transport journeys have been made using contactless payment cards and devices since Transport for London (TfL) launched the service in September, and contactless already represents close to 8% of all pay-as-you-go journeys on the network, TfL says... More
CUP moves to block Alipay
China UnionPay (CUP), the country’s official card payments network, has issued notifications to its member banks to tell them “to avoid working with third-party payment services like Alipay”, Want China Times reports... More
Apple Pay retailers release stats
Apple Pay accounts for 50% of tap-and-pay transactions at McDonald’s, which accepts “all payment products that leverage standard NFC”, according to a New York Times report... More
Softcard adds United MileagePlus cards
United Airlines and Chase are adding support for United MileagePlus credit cards to the Softcard mobile wallet... More
Survey: Contactless adoption requires security proof
Two out of three Americans would consider making mobile or contactless payments more often if they were proven to be secure, a survey of 1,000 US consumers conducted by Kelton Research for Gemalto has found... More
Finnish cafes to test face recognition
A number of cafes in Helsinki, Finland, are to begin testing a payments service developed by Uniqul that uses the geometric proportions of a customer’s face to verify their identity, Yle reports... More
Westpac NZ offers NFC stickers
Westpac New Zealand is to offer customers contactless stickers they can attach to the back of their mobile phone to make NFC payments at more than 15,000 contactless POS terminals across the country... More
Melbourne beacon trial disappoints
Arts Centre Melbourne is rethinking its approach to using Bluetooth beacons after a disappointing pilot that used the technology to send out food and beverage offers to visitors during October’s Melbourne Festival... More
Google exits digital goods payments
Google is to “retire” its Google Wallet for digital goods API and has told merchants who currently let customers pay for digital goods via Google Wallet on their websites that they will need to remove API calls to the service by 2 March 2015... More
Brooklyn Nets launch mobile wallet
American Express has partnered with New York basketball team Brooklyn Nets to pilot Brooklyn eWallet, a digital payment solution integrated into the team’s mobile app that lets fans buy food and drink with their mobile phone at any event held at the Barclays Center arena... More
Canada plans new mobile payment regs
The Canadian government is preparing to give merchants the ability to refuse to accept a particular NFC payment service if it attracts higher than usual fees — should that situation ever arise in the future, a document obtained by the WSJ reveals... More
Powa raises $80m for US launch
Powa Technologies has raised US$80m from Wellington Management to launch its PowaTag mobile payments platform in the US... More
Zwipe reports biometric card pilot results
Four in ten (42%) of the 200 cardholders who took part in a trial of Zwipe’s biometric payment card conducted by Norway’s Sparebanken say they think the fingerprint security solution is more secure than using a PIN code to verify a transaction... More
Whole Foods reports 150k Apple Pay transactions
Whole Foods Market has processed more than 150,000 Apple Pay transactions since the mobile payment solution launched in October, the US supermarket chain has told NFC World+... More
HID reports on NFC healthcare pilot
A care worker tracking pilot that used a Medicaid-compliant NFC tag platform developed by HID Global has cut 30 seconds from the time taken for a carer to check in to a client’s location and resulted in a 100% authentication accuracy rate, the company reports... More
Starwood’s mobile keys go live
The Bluetooth-based mobile keyless entry solution unveiled by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide earlier this month is now live in 10 hotels in Beijing, Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles and Doha and will be rolling out to Aloft, Element and W Hotels across the globe... More
RATP adds NFC to Paris bus and tram stops
Paris area transport authority RATP has begun installing NFC tags at bus and tram stops in the Ile-de-France region to deliver real-time information and route maps to passengers’ smartphones... More
GSMA introduces code for mobile money providers
The GSMA has launched a Code of Conduct for Mobile Money Providers, laying down eight common business principles designed to ensure the development of safe and responsible digital financial services... More
Apple Pay boosts Google Wallet
Google Wallet has seen an uplift of 50% in transactions on a weekly basis since Apple Pay’s launch, with users almost doubling on a monthly basis “in the recent couple of months”, reports Ars Technica... More