PARTNER NEWS: Mobile payments specialist Bell ID’s host card emulation (HCE) solution has been certified by three of the largest global payment schemes, the company has announced, making it the first vendor to receive approval from all three schemes for its HCE platform... More
Visa
Rio Olympics to get NFC wristbands?
Visa has shown off a proof of concept NFC wristband in San Francisco, demonstrating how it could be used for making payments at the Rio 2016 Olympics next year... More
Samsung Pay goes live in the US
Samsung Pay has launched in the US today after going live in Korea in August 2015, where it racked up a total 1.5m transactions in its first month... More
Grupo Aval introduces in-store mobile payments and offers in Colombia
Grupo Aval, Colombia’s largest financial services group, has launched a mobile payment and offers service that lets customers of its Av Villas, Banco de Bogotá, Banco de Occidente and Banco Popular banks make in-store payments using a code generated on their mobile phone... More
Absa Bank to pilot new Visa biometric chip card spec
South Africa’s Absa Bank is to be the first to develop a proof of concept trial of a new Visa specification that will enable the use of biometrics to verify EMV chip card transactions... More
Google launches Android Pay in the US
Google has begun rolling out its Android Pay mobile payment platform across the US today. In-store NFC mobile payments using the system will be possible at more than one million locations within the next few days, with in-app payments and loyalty expected later this year. More
18% of US Visa cards contain EMV chip
Almost one fifth (18%) of the 720m Visa-branded credit, debit and prepaid cards in the US included an EMV chip and some 295,000 merchant locations were enabled for chip card acceptance as of July 2015, up 19% from 247,000 at the end of June 2015, Visa has told NFC World... More
Brits spend £2.5bn with contactless in first half of 2015
More than £2.5bn (US$3.8bn) was spent using contactless cards in the UK in the first half of 2015 compared to £2.32bn (US$3.55bn) for the whole of 2014, research from The UK Cards Association reveals as the UK contactless limit is raised from £20 (US$30) to £30 (US$46)... More
CaixaBank launches HCE mobile payments app
Spain’s CaixaBank has broadened its range of mobile payment services with the launch of CaixaBank Pay, a new app based on host card emulation (HCE) that allows users to make online and in-store payments at any contactless terminal... More
Visa Checkout reports 6m customers
More than six million customers have signed up for Visa Checkout since its launch last year, Visa reports... More
Qiwi adds HCE payments to mobile wallet
Russian payment services provider Qiwi has integrated Visa payWave technology into its Qiwi Wallet app to enable host card emulation (HCE) payments at any contactless terminal... More
PayPal launches contactless reader in UK
PayPal has launched the new version of its PayPal Here card reader, equipped with contactless, in the UK following its unveiling in March... More
Indian banks to test mVisa mobile payments in Bangalore
India’s Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and State Bank of India (SBI) are to pilot a mobile payment service developed by Visa this summer that will let select customers make in-store, online and bill payments as well as send and receive money using their mobile devices. More
Stripe gets access to Visa Token Service through strategic partnership
Mobile and online payment provider Stripe has entered into a strategic partnership with Visa that will make it one of the first beta partners to connect to Visa’s network capabilities, giving its developer community access to the payment network’s tokenization service... More
Visa signs up 2,300 financial institutions for Visa Token Service
More than 2,300 financial institutions and banking partners have now signed up for Visa’s tokenization service with international expansion set to happen “in the fall”, Visa has revealed during a third quarter earnings call... More
Cab:app taxis to accept NFC mobile payments
More than 7,600 taxi drivers in 90 cities across the UK and Ireland can accept NFC mobile payments from passengers using the taxi-hailing app Cab:app through an mPOS gateway provided by Payworks... More
Barclaycard launches second generation bPay wearable payment devices
Barclaycard has unveiled a second generation of its bPay wristbands and is to add contactless-enabled keyfobs and stickers to the range of bPay devices that will be made available for purchase on 1 July. More
CUA credit union reports rising interest in redi2PAY HCE mobile payments service
The number of customers using CUA’s redi2PAY HCE mobile payments service more than 35 times per month was about three times higher in March 2015 than it was six months earlier, and the number of customers using mobile payments five to 14 times per month was up 63% for the same period, the Australian credit union has revealed... More
Barclays and Starbucks promote contactless in UK
Barclays customers can upgrade the size of their Starbucks coffee for free at participating locations in the UK when using their contactless card to pay until the end of June... More
Almost one in six US consumers are using mobile wallets
Almost one in six US consumers (15%) have used a mobile wallet in the past six months, up from 9% in the same period in 2013, and an additional 22% are likely to adopt mobile wallet functionality in the coming six months, a study released by market research and consulting firm Chadwick Martin Bailey has found... More