Jason Hogg, founder and former CEO of Revolution Money and a co-inventor of the technology behind American Express’ Serve and Bluebird services, has raised US$6.2m for Hangit, a location-based messaging platform that, he told NFC World+, aims to give small merchants “the same skills and capabilities a large retailer would have with their marketing platforms.” More
Banco Central del Ecuador is to launch a mobile payments scheme to act as the national mobile wallet in the country, Payments Views reports... More
Alibaba-owned online payments giant Alipay’s Alipay Wallet app now has 190 million active users in China who use the solution to shop online via their smartphones, pay bills and pay for public transport... More
Google has talked about its plans with regard to its Google Wallet app and mobile payments, hinting at possible partnerships and insisting that the company is still trying to “get it right.” More
Hamburger restaurant chain Johnny Rockets is to roll out E la Carte’s tablet-based Presto platform to more than 200 locations in the US in November after a three month pilot that saw an 11.2% improvement in table turn time... More
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Taiwanese computer maker Acer is to join Apple and Samsung in introducing a payment service for users of its mobile phones and wearable devices, Want China Times reports... More
Mobeam’s mobile coupon and offer app Beep’nGo has now surpassed five million downloads to compatible Android devices... More
Dutch newspaper publisher NDC Media is testing Bluetooth beacons with thirty shops in the town of Leeuwarden, Netherlands, to send offers to consumer smartphones running the Lightcurb mobile app... More
Almost a quarter of Canadians (23%) have now made a mobile payment in-store with nearly a third (29%) having used their device to make an online purchase, new research from PayPal Canada has found... More
Location-based shopping app Shopkick reports that it has driven more than US$1bn in revenue for its partner retailers since its launch in 2010, more than half of which occurred in the past year... More
Harbortouch, a US-based point-of-sale system and merchant services provider, has unveiled Perkwave, a mobile app that uses Apple Pay to let customers pay at the table in participating restaurants. The service also includes loyalty and rewards functionality to encourage customers to pay using their mobile device. More
Kotak Mahindra Bank has launched a bank-agnostic payment service for Facebook that will enable 250 million Indian bank account holders to transfer money by choosing a recipient’s name from their friends list... More
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Singapore carrier Singtel is taking carrier billing into the physical goods world with a pilot test of a service that lets customers order Angry Birds plush toys for delivery to their home address and charge the cost to their phone bill. In the first week, “we’re already seeing five times lower shopping cart abandonment than previously with credit-card billing based checkout,” supplier Fortumo says. More
Version 8.1 of iOS is now available for download, and brings with it the US consumer rollout of the Apple Pay mobile payments system... More
There are 20.55 million NFC mobile handsets in use in Japan according to new data compiled by the Mobile NFC Association... More
Canadian startup Bionym has begun shipping its Nymi wristband to partners and key developers after starting to take pre-orders in September last year... More
American Express is to launch a US$10m Small Merchant EMV Assistance Program in February 2015 to drive adoption of EMV... More
Twitter is planning to launch its new Buy button in the first quarter of 2015, VentureBeat reports, to let users make a purchase directly from a Tweet... More
Starbucks customers in Portland are to be the first in the US to be able to order and pay for their coffee ahead of arrival and the service will be rolled out across the country in 2015, the company has announced. The move follows the introduction of a QR code-based mobile ordering service in Korea in June. More
JPMorgan Chase plans to make its debit and credit cards available in a wide array of mobile wallets — including one of its own to be launched later this year — even if that means cutting current margins, CEO Jamie Dimon has told analysts during the bank’s third quarter earnings call. More