US mobile payments provider Square has now processed a total of one billion payment transactions... More
Archive: News in brief
Softcard to be on 100 phones by year’s end
US carrier joint venture Softcard’s NFC mobile payments service will be available on more than 100 devices by the end of the year... More
Costa Rican bank adds face biometrics to mobile app
Costa Rican bank Grupo Mutual has worked with biometric technology provider FacePhi to build face recognition into its mobile banking app... More
Nationwide adds wearable banking
Customers of the UK’s Nationwide bank can now see their account balance in real time on an Android Wear smartwatch... More
ANZ to launch NFC wallet
Australia’s ANZ is to launch an NFC-enabled mobile wallet in early 2015, following a successful trial of the service... More
The Shard gets BLE beacons
London’s highest viewing gallery is to deploy Bluetooth beacons 800 feet (243m) above the city at the top of its tallest building. Aruba will supply the The View at The Shard with BLE beacons and a software platform to deliver information about notable landmarks visible from the tourist attraction to visitors’ mobile devices... More
Pivo passes 100,000 active users
Finnish mobile wallet Pivo has now been downloaded to 300,000 smartphones and a third of users — more than 100,000 — are making use of the app every day... More
Small US businesses have no POS upgrade plans
Just 4% of independent business owners in the US are aware they have a contactless POS terminal and 14% are not sure, Newtek Business Services’ latest SBA Market Sentiment Survey has revealed — and only 7% say they plan to upgrade so they can make contactless NFC payments like Apple Pay available to their customers, while 93% say they have no plans to do so... More
Windows Phone gets Softcard NFC payments
Windows Phone users with AT&T in the US can now make NFC payments by downloading a new Softcard app from the Windows Phone Store... More
Eurosmart forecasts 600m NFC SEs in 2015
A total of 8bn secure elements will be shipped this year, with SIM cards accounting for 5.1bn of the total, according to new statistics released by smart security industry association Eurosmart, with the total rising to 12bn in 2020... More
604m will have biometric wearables by 2019
There will be 604m users of wearable biometric technology globally by 2019, a new report from Goode Intelligence forecasts... More
Semble begins NFC pilot in NZ
Semble, the NFC payments joint venture between New Zealand’s carriers and the Paymark payments network, has begun testing its NFC mobile payment solution with 250 of the company’s shareholders and stakeholders in Auckland and Wellington... More
Google Wallet gets automatic top-ups
An new version of Google Wallet, now available for Android and iOS devices, offers additional ways to add money to a user’s account balance... More
MCX to open up “in months”
The exclusivity rule that prevents members of MCX from accepting other mobile payments services in their stores will expire in “months, not years,” CEO Dekkers Davidson has told Re/Code... More
BitPay adds NFC payments
Bitcoin payment gateway BitPay is to roll out a point-of-sale app to “every mobile market worldwide” that makes it possible for merchants to process Bitcoin payments via NFC... More
Chase and Vantiv to offer Poynt POS
Chase Paymentech and Vantiv, two of the largest payment processors in the US, have signed up to distribute the former head of Google Wallet’s new Poynt POS terminal to their merchant bases... More
Apple Pay contract leaked
The full 19-page contract that banks wishing to offer Apple Pay to their cardholders must sign in order to take part has been leaked to Digital Transactions... More
Target includes Apple Pay in mobile app
MCX member Target has integrated Apple Pay into its mobile app but is not accepting payments via Apple Pay in its stores, the retailer has told NFC World+... More
Judge rules on fingerprint-locked smartphones
A Virginia Circuit Court judge has ruled that police officers cannot force criminal suspects to divulge mobile phone passwords but they can force them to unlock their phone with a fingerprint scanner, WSJ reports... More
Valyou goes live across Norway
The NFC mobile wallet solution developed by mobile network operator Telenor and banking group DNB has launched nationwide across Norway... More