Cancer Research UK is to install contactless technology in four of its shop windows, enabling passersby to make a £2 donation to the charity by simply tapping their contactless card to a POS terminal placed on the other side of the glass. More
New York City’s Metro Transit Authority (MTA) is in discussions to replace its MetroCard payment system with a new US$450m system set to include support for NFC mobile payments and contactless cards... More
More than 63% of US retailers have included payment security among their top three priorities for 2015 in a survey by Boston Retail Partners, with 650% more retailers planning to support EMV by October... More
The largest producer of confectionery in Latvia has installed Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons in its stores in the capital Riga to send information directly to a customer’s smartphone in the default language of their device. More
PARTNER NEWS: Conformance testing specialist Clear2Pay has put together an infographic that visually explains host card emulation (HCE), how it is used and why testing is necessary in a mobile payments system. More
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More than half of all US retailers (55%) are still not fully prepared for the migration to EMV despite the impending October deadline, a survey for ACI Worldwide has revealed... More
More than 770m mobile apps that make use of biometric authentication will be downloaded annually by 2019, up from 6m this year, Juniper Research predicts... More
Three quarters of British consumers aged 16 to 24 (76%) say they would feel comfortable using biometric security when making a payment, with more than half keen to see facial recognition, fingerprints and retina scans replace passwords and PIN codes altogether. More
First National Bank (FNB) in the US will begin making Apple Pay available to its customers in the first quarter of 2015... More
Amazon is contacting users of its Amazon Wallet service to inform them that the service, launched in beta in July 2014, is closing down on 21 January, CNET reports... More
NFC World’s “Evaluating NFC security strategies: The role of the secure element in the evolving NFC landscape” webinar is now available to view online. 749 people registered to attend the live event, and participants gave the presentation an overall rating of four out of five. More
Turkish payment system operator BKM has added a host card emulation (HCE) option to its platform, providing the country’s issuing banks with a way to offer HCE payments to their customers for the first time. More
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Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has invested an undisclosed sum in Israeli start-up Visualead, developer of the “visual” QR code technology adopted by Chinese social media site RenRen in May last year. The companies have also entered into a strategic cooperation agreement that will give Alibaba the right to use Visualead’s patents and technology across its ecosystem. More
Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has launched 7-Fans, a QR code-based mobile payment and loyalty app that rewards customers with one point for every HK$5 spent using the service at any of more than 900 stores across Hong Kong... More
Almost one third of German consumers (31%) would use mobile payments if it meant they could do away with a purse or wallet completely, a survey by TNS Infratest for mobile payments provider Yapital has revealed. More
PARTNER NEWS: Token requestors play a key role in the delivery of mobile payment services like Apple Pay, Doug Yeager, CEO of SimplyTapp, explains in a blog post — and taking the time to get a detailed understanding of what that role involves could pay dividends in the future. More
NFC World’s webinar on NFC security strategies and the roles of the secure element and HCE takes place at 3pm GMT today... More
Samsung could replace the swipe-based fingerprint sensor used on the Galaxy S5 with a touch-based sensor on the Galaxy S6, expected to be introduced in the coming months... More
Financial services group the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) is to enable its members to use biometric authentication, including face and voice verification, to log in to their accounts on their smartphone. The function is expected to be available in early 2015. More
Google is responding to the successful launch of Apple Pay by going on the mobile payments acquisition trail, according to industry rumours — and US carrier-owned NFC venture Softcard, which laid off 60 staff last week, could be a key target. More