Passengers on UK rail company Chiltern Railways will soon be able to travel without tickets using a service integrating a mobile app with Bluetooth and geolocation services, which will track commuters throughout their journey, give them access through ticket barriers and automatically charge them the best price for the route taken. More
Customers of China Merchants Bank will be able to withdraw cash using face recognition technology installed in all of the bank’s ATMs in Shanghai by the end of 2017, South China Morning Post reports... More
Beauty product buyers will soon be able to add their name to their makeup compact and perfume bottles, write personal messages to gift recipients, access information based on skin conditions, receive targeted advertisements and connect to social media campaigns through an electronic ink display, powered by NFC, on the product packaging. More
Apple’s next iPhone could include facial or gesture recognition, according to a research note issued to clients by financial services firm Cowen and Company... More
European payment infrastructure provider EBA Clearing has begun testing an instant payment platform unveiled earlier this month by the European Central Bank, that will allow European consumers to make cross-border mobile P2P payments... More
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Niti Aayog, an Indian government policy think tank, is producing an index to rank Indian states based on the number of digital transactions made, according to Economic Times... More
HSBC is to launch a P2P mobile payments app in Hong Kong early this year that will allow customers of any bank to transfer money using a recipient’s mobile phone number... More
Indian consumers can now submit prescriptions, buy medicines, find doctors and book appointments through online pharmacy Easymedico using First Global Data subsidiary Msewa’s VPayQwik mobile wallet... More
Commuters in Singapore will soon be able to pay for public transport using an NFC-enabled fitness tracker or smartwatch linked to their EZ-Link transit card. The devices will allow for “fast, convenient and reliable” contactless payments on public transport and at more than 30,000 EZ-Link acceptance points, the card issuer says. More
“The time is ripe” for the adoption of blockchain technology in India, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s research arm which believes the technology has the potential to digitise the country’s fiat currency... More
Customers of Daimler’s mobility services will soon be able to use a dedicated Mercedes Pay mobile payments platform, allowing them to “easily and securely pay for mobility offerings and services using their smartphones”, the German automotive giant has announced. More
Hong Kong ATM network Jetco has partnered with seven banks in Macau to offer Jetco Pay P2P, the mobile phone number-based transfer service that launched with 12 banks in January 2016... More
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Standards body GlobalPlatform has published a framework detailing how trusted applications hosted on a GlobalPlatform compliant Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) can be remotely and dynamically managed... More
An APK teardown conducted by XDA reveals that Google plans to add the ability to make payments directly through its Google Home voice-activated speaker powered by Google Assistant... More
Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is planning to establish a company that provides biometric authentication services together with a “major Japanese IT company and an Irish company as early as this spring”, The Japan News reports... More
France has become the first eurozone country in which consumers with iOS devices can use Wirecard’s Boon service to make purchases with Apple Pay, by adding a virtual Boon card to the mobile payment service... More
Thousands of small-scale farmers across East Africa will soon be using their feature phones to buy, sell and receive payments for their goods through a mobile app and SMS service developed by Mastercard. The payments giant says 2Kuze offers farmers greater price transparency, more direct access to buyers and financial services, and “paves the way to a cashless agricultural sector”. More
US bank Fifth Third has announced it will support the five major mobile payment services — Android Pay, Apple Pay, Masterpass, Microsoft Wallet and Samsung Pay... More
The global mobile payments market will reach US$3,388bn by 2022, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.4%, Allied Market Research predicts... More
Apple Pay users in Singapore are being offered a string of discounts when using the mobile payment service to celebrate the Chinese New Year... More