Researchers at Imperial College London have developed low-cost NFC-based spoilage sensors for meat and fish packaging that could be in supermarkets within three years and help to reduce the amount of still safe to eat food that UK consumers throw away each year because it has reached its sell-by date... More
Six European mobile wallet providers — Bluecode (Austria), ePassi (Finland), Momo Pocket (Spain), Pagaqui (Portugal), Pivo (Finland) and Vipps (Norway) — have adopted a QR code format from Chinese payment provider Alipay to ensure digital payment interoperability and improve the international reach of customers’ wallets as well as boosting sales, participants have told NFCW... More
Drinks brand Malibu is launching an NFC-based promotion in the US states of Ohio and Texas that enables customers to use NFC tags attached to 300,000 ‘connected bottles’ to win branded goods and access cocktail recipes and other content... More
Developing cross-border ticketing in public transport networks — Intelligent Transport — “Based on the concept of account-based ticketing, nationally differing ticketing systems can be linked without the need to change existing national standards. Key to the success of this is letting different systems coexist, but while introducing an interoperable layer that can connect the different existing national systems.”
Uber is making a fintech push with a New York hiring spree — CNBC — “There are many possible payment and lending innovations Uber could come up with: It has 93 million active users globally, most of whom use linked credit cards or fund a wallet called Uber Cash to pay for rides and food delivery… Creating a bank account has been discussed at a high level at Uber but may be years away, or the company could decide against it.”
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Paciolan announces support for contactless tickets in Apple Wallet for college sports — Paciolan — “The first schools to offer contactless tickets for the fall 2019 football season include Baylor University, Louisiana State University, Michigan State University, University of Mississippi, Georgia Tech, and Rutgers University.”
Half the world’s population to use digital wallets by 2024 — Juniper Research — “A new study from Juniper Research has found that the number of people using digital wallets will increase from 2.3bn this year to nearly 4bn, or 50% of the world’s population, by 2024. This in turn will push wallet transaction values up by more than 80% to more than $9tn per annum.”
MTA: Latest Omny numbers ‘exceed even our most ambitious’ projections — Gothamist — “After sharing higher-than-forecasted numbers from Saturday (the first full day of service), the latest user numbers (which reflect numbers from Saturday through Wednesday) reveal that 38,987 people have used Omny at pilot locations… The MTA had expected weekly usage to be about 6,000-12,000 users on the subways and 800-1,500 on buses.”
Have contactless cards become the tool of choice for low-value payments? — RBR — “At the end of 2017, there were 5.3bn contactless cards in circulation worldwide — this represents 35% of all cards, a share that RBR forecasts will increase to 57% by 2023… The number of eftpos terminals worldwide which allow contactless payments rose by 41% in 2017 to reach 40.9m.”
White Paper: Non-NFC based Mobile Sepa Card Proximity Payments — European Payments Council — “The document aims to create awareness amongst the payments industry about the development of non-NFC based MCPP [Mobile Sepa Card Proximity Payments] solutions and to provide a common understanding of the MCPP landscape. This final version also reflects the outcome of a three-month public consultation that ended in February 2019.”
NHL takes ticketless path with Ticketmaster extension — SportsPro — “Going forward, NHL tickets will include near field communication (NFC) technology that allows fans to ‘tap’ into a venue entrance, and aims to protect against digital tickets being copied and resold… The deal comes after the NHL, which introduced mobile ticketing during its Stadium Series in 2018, experienced an 85% and 88% growth in the number of fans using mobile tickets during its 2018 and 2019 All-Star games, respectively.”
Android Q Beta 4: Google Pay cards could live in power menu w/ ‘Cards & Passes’ — 9to5Google — “Cards will apparently appear as soon as the power button is long-pressed and users can then swipe through them, presumably to switch the card being used with NFC payments. Based on the description, this carousel will also be able to show things such as loyalty cards and tickets.”
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Customers at sporting goods retailer Decathlon in the Netherlands who don’t want to line up at a physical checkout can now simply scan their goods, pay and leave — without setting off alarms — thanks to the introduction of a mobile self-checkout solution... More
Google has announced a suite of upgrades for transportation operators, airlines and loyalty card issuers that extends the functionality of its Google Pay API for Passes — and revealed future plans to make Passes “available to your users on Google even if they haven’t installed the Google Pay app”... More
iPhone users will soon be able to read a full array of ISO 7816 contactless smartcards and tags, including passports, transit and access cards, Apple has revealed. “However, for the time being, reading payment cards will not be supported.” More
Apple’s update to its Core NFC framework for iOS 13 will include support for reading passports and ID documents, chip checker app maker Innovalor has confirmed to NFC World... More
More than 10,000 people tapped into MTA’s contactless payments this weekend — Crain’s New York Business — “The authority anticipated it would register between 6,000 and 12,000 tap-ins per week under the pilot for the system… About 6,100 people paid through Omny in the subway on Saturday and another 4,400 on Sunday. The MTA said about 80% of Omny payments last weekend came through phones.”
American Express says to NYC Subway riders: Don’t tap and pay without It — American Express — “Beginning in July, all newly issued and replacement US American Express consumer cards will be contactless. The contactless feature is now available on all US American Express consumer cards upon request through AmericanExpress.com, the Amex mobile app, or by phone.”
BofA jumps on tap-to-pay bandwagon as NYC’s subway moves forward — Bloomberg — “The lender will send 4m contactless cards this month to customers in New York, Boston and San Francisco who have Visa debit or credit cards… It plans to measure usage in those markets before deciding on a broader rollout at the beginning of next year.”
EMVCo has produced a new payment icon that can be used to signal to consumers that its EMV Secure Remote Commerce ‘virtual payment terminal’ specification is being used as a foundation to process card-based payment transactions in remote-checkout environments, including websites and apps... More