Barclays has announced plans to roll its bPay prepaid wearable payments offering into its Pingit mobile payments app, “giving 3.6m users access to simple ways to pay on the go”. More
India is launching a single card which can be used to pay for travel on all transportation systems across the country. The National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) can be used on metro, buses and suburban railways, as well as to pay for parking and tolls and in shops. More
Hyundai Motor Group is enabling drivers to access their car and start the engine using a smartphone app and NFC instead of a physical key. The technology is set to be available on new Hyundai and Kia cars which go into production later this year. More
Presentations from the Wearable Payment Summit at MWC Barcelona 2019 are now available to download from the NFC World Knowledge Centre... More
The NFC Forum has released a new candidate specification that makes it easy for mobile payments services based on QR codes to add NFC functionality, giving “payment service providers and consumers the opportunity to take advantage of the simple and secure NFC-based payment solutions already in use worldwide.” More
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Customers of KFC will be sent a digital version of their receipt when they pay with certain bank cards following a tie-up between the fast food chain in the UK and Flux. Customers who have opted in to the independent Flux platform will receive any loyalty points earned automatically. More
W3C approves WebAuthn as the web standard for password-free logins — VentureBeat — “The specification lets users log into online accounts using biometrics, mobile devices, and/or Fido security keys. WebAuthn is supported by Android and Windows 10. On the browser side, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge all added support last year. Apple has supported WebAuthn in preview versions of Safari since December.”
GSMA report highlights 20% annual increase in mobile money accounts to more than 866m worldwide — GSMA — “At the end of 2018, there were more than 866m registered accounts in 90 countries — a 20% increase on 2017. The report also shows that the mobile money industry processed transactions worth US$1.3bn a day in 2018, with digital transaction values growing at more than twice the rate of cash transactions.”
Mastercard and du partner to usher in a new era of payments experiences and security across the Middle East and Africa — Mastercard — “NuDetect uses machine learning to analyse ‘passive biometrics’ like how a person types, holds their phone, moves their mouse or where they use their phone, to anticipate and prevent fraudulent card-not-present transactions, which includes ecommerce payments. The process to verify the user occurs without introducing any friction or interruption in the transaction.”
Two-thirds of consumers favour single mobile app for banking and payments over cash and physical cards — Entersekt — “More than two-thirds (68%) of regular banking app users in the US would ‘like to do all banking and payments via one single mobile app’. A similar majority (67%) claim they would be less likely to use cash or physical credit cards if they had such an app. The lure of an all-in-one combination app is stronger among younger adults (18 to 44 years) who regularly used banking apps: just over three-quarters (76%) want one, compared with only 50% of those aged 55 and over.”
Five-currency basket: Brics countries create a single payment service — Izvestia (translation) — “One of the likely scenarios for the project is the creation of a special online wallet that will unite the payment systems of all the Brics countries… The common wallet will work in the same way as existing payment services, such as Apple Pay or Samsung Pay. To this end, a separate cloud platform will be created that will connect the national payment systems of the five countries.”
China’s mobile payment users reach 583 million in 2018 — Xinhua — “About 583m people used mobile payment in China in 2018, up 10.7% compared with 2017, according to a report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)… About 67.2% of China’s internet users used mobile payments offline, up from 65.2% in 2017.”
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Beatie Wolfe’s ‘intelligent’ Raw Space album features songs embedded in business cards — Dezeen — “Musician Beatie Wolfe has collaborated with eight graphic designers to create an album of cards that listeners tap against a smartphone to play… Scanning one of the business card-sized boards using a NFC reader app reveals an individual page for the track, which is complete with lyrics, the music video, photos, song notes and information about the card itself.”
Visa and payments hardware specialist Planeta Informatica have come up with an easy way to add contactless payments at public transit turnstiles. More
NXP drives convenience in Chinese Access Market with ‘RocketXS’ — NXP — PARTNER NEWS — “The RocketXS solution allows a quick and reliable unlocking via fingerprint, Bluetooth Low Energy and NFC. It also takes convenience and security to the next level as all NFC cards in a user’s wallet (phone) can be set as a door key. This means that the real key is hidden and only the user himself knows which one is right and thus increases the difficulty of break-ins and hacking.”
A transparent ink ‘fingerprint’ which can be sprayed onto products and read by a smartphone to combat counterfeiting has been developed by researchers at the University of Copenhagen. The system, from the University of Copenhagen’s Nano-Science Center, is based on physical unclonable function (PUF) technology. More
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has started final testing of a new contactless ticketing system which it announced in 2017. MTA employees will be the first to be able to use a contactless bank card or a wallet, such as Apple Pay, on their smartphone to pay for their travel. More
PARTNER NEWS: Tappy Technologies has launched a platform which enables traditional brands to turn their watches easily into secure, contactless payment devices. Tappy’s Wearable Token Services Platform lets consumers link the details of their debit or credit card to their watch and use it to make payments wherever their card would be accepted worldwide. More
LG’s latest flagship uses your hand veins to unlock — TechCrunch — “LG says the phone’s Hand ID tech is the first to use ‘advanced palm vein authentication’ — which could well be accurate… LG’s Hand ID identifies owners by recognising the shape, thickness and other individual characteristics of the veins in the palms of their hands.”
E Sun Commercial Bank has fitted face recognition security to its ATMs. The Taiwanese Bank is using NeoFace technology from NEC Corporation to authenticate uses at ATMs in five different locations. “These are the world’s first facial recognition automation ATMs with one-time password technology,” says the company. More