The Salvation Army is adding NFC chips to all 25,000 of its iconic Red Kettles for its Christmas 2019 fundraising campaign, enabling shoppers to simply tap their Apple or Android NFC phone to make a donation to the charity... More
Tourists visiting China can now use a version of Alipay designed specifically for international travellers to make mobile payments during their trip, Alipay has announced... More
One Biometric API over all Android — Google — “In addition to supporting multiple biometric authentication form factors, the API has made it much easier for developers to check whether a given device has biometric sensors… In addition, the framework has built-in support for facial authentication in Android 10 so that vendors don’t need to create a custom implementation.”
Public transportation operator First Group has begun a pilot of a new mobile ticketing service that uses host card emulation (HCE) to let customers with an Android NFC phone purchase a bus ticket, provision it to Google Pay and then use their smartphone to tap an on-board contactless reader when they board a bus... More
Customers of Canada’s CIBC bank can now replace a lost or stolen credit card “in a few simple steps through mobile or online banking and instantly use the new card with their mobile wallet before the physical card arrives”... More
Three in ten US smartphone owners now use a mobile payments app to make payments in stores — and Apple Pay is now the most popular with 30.3 million users, according to new research by eMarketer... More
Shoppers at 30 US supermarkets operated by Netherlands-based retail giant Ahold Delhaize will be able to use their mobile phone to scan items as they shop and then self-checkout and pay by the end of this year... More
The UK government has introduced an iOS version of its EU Exit: ID Document Check app, enabling EU citizens to use the NFC passport reading capabilities Apple has introduced in iOS 13 to register for settled status in the UK... More
PARTNER NEWS: Food giant Kraft Heinz is using tamper resistant NXP NFC tags for an innovative marketing campaign that lets customers tap their NFC phone to a tag incorporated into product packaging for a chance to win a gift card — but only if they have first purchased the product and opened the packet... More
Samsung’s NFC phone-based contactless payments acceptance service is now live in Canada and is to be introduced globally “starting in 2020”, the company has announced... More
A new deal between Google and Cubic Transportation Systems is set to make it possible for public transport users in a number of major cities around the world to use Google Pay to add their transit card to their NFC mobile phone... More
Public transportation operators from across the US state of Ohio have gone live with EZfare, a new service that lets passengers use a single mobile ticketing app to buy tickets and passes from any of the participating operators... More
The number of passengers able to use the NFC transit ticketing system which went live in Paris in September is to be increased in 2020-21 with the addition of support for host card emulation (HCE)... More
PARTNER NEWS: Chipmaker NXP has updated NFC TagWriter, its Android app that can write and rewrite information such as contact data, web links, WiFi and Bluetooth connection details, as well as triggers for emails, calls, text messages, apps and more, into single or multiple NFC cards and tags... More
The German government is using the NFC contactless chip reading capabilities now available on Apple iPhones in a new iOS app that lets citizens securely identify themselves to a range of online service providers by reading their contactless national ID card with their smartphone... More
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has launched a major initiative designed to persuade consumers to move away from paying in cash, by providing a rebate whenever they use a card or mobile phone to make a purchase at any of 500,000 merchants across the country... More
Russia’s PSB bank has begun the country’s first pilot of dongle-free contactless payments acceptance on standard Android NFC devices. The new SoftPOS service “allows you to turn any NFC phone running Android 7.0 (and above) into a fully fledged POS terminal,” the bank says. More
Banco Proamerica de Costa Rica has become the first bank in Latin America to let merchants accept contactless payments directly on an Android NFC smartphone, without the need for a separate card acceptance dongle... More
Public transportation users in Paris can now buy and store transit tickets and passes on Samsung and Orange NFC phones — and can use any Android phone to buy a ticket and then upload it to their contactless travel card via NFC... More
CapMetro releases new version of its app — Capital Metro — “Earlier this week, Capital Metro rolled out a new, more intuitive version of the CapMetro app. The highly rated app allows customers to pay for their tickets on the go, stay up to date on where their bus is, and map out their entire itinerary. New features include: Easy fare/pass purchasing; Convenient Apple Pay and Google Pay; Quicker pass access; Faster real-time tracking; More robust trip planner.”