Facebook users in the US will soon be able to make and receive secure mobile payments for free via the social network’s Messenger app. The service is rolling out “over the coming months”, Facebook says. More
Korean internet portal Naver is to introduce a mobile payments platform from June that will let users verify themselves using fingerprint recognition and make payments using their Naver ID, a password, the mobile number of the recipient and either a credit or debit card... More
French railway operator SNCF has expanded availability of its NFC ticketing service to include the Alsace, Aquitaine, Haute-Normandie, Lorraine and Midi-Pyrenees regions... More
MFS, a joint venture between Telefonica-owned carrier Vivo and MasterCard, has expanded its Vivo Zuum mobile payment service to São Paulo, the biggest city in Brazil... More
Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Ma has demonstrated a prototype biometric verification service that could enable a payment to be authorized by simply capturing an image of a mobile phone user’s face. More
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Finland’s largest financial services group is to add support for HCE payments to the mobile wallet app it introduced two years ago. OP’s Pivo wallet has been downloaded more than 500,000 times and allows customers of the co-operative group’s member banks to monitor their spending, track loyalty programmes and access vouchers. More
UK bank Halifax is investigating how Bionym’s Nymi Band, a device that uses the wearer’s unique cardiac rhythm to authenticate their identity, could be used to reduce the need for customers to remember their passwords... More
Apple Pay has been tried at least once by 42% of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners in the US, a survey by Auriemma Consulting Group (ACG) has found — and almost half the owners who haven’t yet tried the NFC mobile payments service (47%) say they intend to do so within the next six months. More
UK shoppers have been able to make contactless donations to a national charity via 10 larger-than-life statues of famous comedians placed in cities across the country. More
Swatch will launch its first watch containing an NFC chip within two months, CEO Nick Hayek has announced — and deals signed with China UnionPay as well as one other payments network mean that owners will be able to use their watch to make payments around the world. More
Customers at a Carrefour hypermarket in Paris are now able to use their smartwatch to access their digital shopping list, tick off items as they go and receive loyalty points when they check out. More
Square has bought Kili Technology, the Canada-based mPOS startup that acquired NFC-on-microSD pioneer DeviceFidelity in November 2014... More
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French supermarket chain Intermarché has introduced an NFC shopping service at its Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris store, enabling customers to add products to a digital shopping basket and receive personalised discount vouchers with a tap of their NFC phone. More
Four in five iPhone 6 and 6+ owners in the US are yet to make use of Apple Pay (79%), a Trustev survey has found... More
NXP Semiconductors has showcased a proof-of-concept connected car that makes use of long-range UHF RFID tags and NFC to help drivers of the future access and pay for restricted parking spaces, get warnings of traffic jams and allow groceries or parcels to be delivered directly into their car without them even being there to open the trunk. More
Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is now offering customers with an NFC mobile phone running Android 4.4 KitKat or higher the ability to make mobile payments using host card emulation... More
More than 1.5bn airline boarding passes will be delivered via mobile by 2019, up from 745m this year, Juniper Research predicts... More
Coffee chain Starbucks is expanding its Mobile Order & Pay service to 650 locations in the US states of Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Alaska following a trial which has been running in Portland since December 2014... More
Sweden-based mobile payments provider Seamless is offering users of its Seqr mobile payments service up to 3% cashback on their purchases, “valid on all purchases and effective on top of any other loyalty program or discount.” The offer is designed to persuade more consumers to adopt mobile payments, CEO Peter Fredell has told NFC World, and is financed via a mixture of revenue streams. More
How Apple Watch owners will be able to use their device to make payments, unlock hotel rooms and the garage doors at their home has been demonstrated by Kevin Lynch, Apple’s VP of Technology, at the company’s Spring Forward launch event. More