Starbucks customers across the US will soon be able to purchase gift cards using Apple Pay and send them to friends and family within Apple’s iMessage platform. The move comes as the coffee giant reveals it now has approximately nine million mobile paying customers with one in three using Mobile Order & Pay, which accounted for 8% of all transactions made across US stores last month. More
Tencent
Starbucks customers get voice ordering as mobile orders and payments continue to grow
US consumers can now place orders from coffee giant Starbucks by speaking into the Starbucks iOS mobile app or to Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa. The move comes as the company reveals that mobile orders made up 7% of all its US transactions in the last quarter, with mobile payments now accounting for 27%. More
Starbucks in China to accept WeChat Pay mobile payments
Customers at about 2,500 Starbucks locations across mainland China can now make mobile payments using Chinese internet giant Tencent’s WeChat Pay mobile payments platform by scanning a QR code at the point of sale... More
Masterpass comes to 30,000 South African merchants after SnapScan deal
South Africans can now use Mastercard’s Masterpass digital wallet to pay for goods and services at more than 30,000 merchants accepting SnapScan in South Africa, using their mobile phones by scanning a QR code at the point of sale... More
McDonald’s South Africa pilots QR code mobile payments with WeChat
McDonald’s South Africa is piloting a mobile payment service at select restaurants in Johannesburg and Cape Town using social messaging app WeChat Africa, enabling customers to complete purchases by presenting QR codes generated by the app at the point of sale... More
Tencent to ramp up WeChat Pay in Japan
Chinese internet giant Tencent is working to roll out its WeChat Pay mobile payment service to 10,000 Japanese stores by the end of 2016... More
WeChat integrates with Givex to push in-store presence
Chinese ecommerce giant Tencent’s WeChat mobile payments and messaging app has been integrated with Givex’s Vexilor point-of-sale solution to enable users of the service to make in-store purchases by scanning a QR code. More
Tencent reports major increase in mobile payment users
Chinese internet giant Tencent has reported that the number of monthly active users (MAU) of its mobile payments services has increased by seven times over the last year... More
WeChat Pay now available to overseas merchants
Chinese internet giant Tencent has made its WeChat Pay platform available to overseas vendors so they can serve Chinese consumers when they travel abroad... More
WeChat secures payments with fingerprints
Users of Tencent’s WeChat mobile payment service will soon be able to authenticate transactions with a fingerprint... More
Global mobile payment market to hit $620bn in 2016
Consumers across the globe will use their mobile phones to spend a total of US$620bn on all forms of mobile transaction this year, representing a 37.8% year-on-year growth from $450bn in 2015, research from TrendForce reveals. By 2017, total mobile payment revenue will reach $780bn, climbing to $930bn in 2018 and $1.08tn in 2019. More
WeChat Wallet launches pilot in Hong Kong
Chinese ecommerce giant Tencent is testing its WeChat Wallet service with users in Hong Kong... More
Tencent launches WeChat mobile wallet in South Africa
Chinese ecommerce giant Tencent has launched a mobile wallet service in South Africa in partnership with Standard Bank. The service lets users of social messaging app WeChat make P2P transfers, pay for services such as airtime, data and electricity and make in-store payments by scanning QR codes at merchants supporting the SnapScan mobile payments platform. More
Tencent reports 200m mobile payment users
More than 200 million customers have bound their bank cards to internet giant Tencent’s QQ Wallet and Weixin Pay mobile payment platforms, the company has revealed — but supporting them is proving costly... More
China moves to open up mobile payments services
People’s Bank of China has proposed new regulations that could force internet companies Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu to offer each others’ online payment services alongside their own... More
Tencent’s mobile OS to offer payments
Chinese internet giant Tencent has released a mobile operating system that is set to include mobile payments functionality... More
WeChat offers payments in stores
Tencent’s instant messaging app WeChat can now be used to make payments in the retail stores of nine Chinese merchants including DQ Ice Queen, NUS Pharmacy, Rainbow, One Plus One, Lotus, Good Neighbours, Baby Room, Minsheng Department Store and NUS 365, according to Iamwire... More