Octopus transit card holders can now use their iPhone or Apple Watch to pay their fares and make purchases at 35,000 retail outlets across Hong Kong that accept Octopus for payments... More
PARTNER NEWS: Dejamobile has launched a white label solution that enables merchants to be provided with the ability to accept EMV contactless and digital payments on standard NFC phones and tablets — with no additional hardware required... More
Visa has filed an application for a patent that sets out a way for a central bank to take fiat money that is currently in circulation, digitize it, remove the converted physical currency from circulation and then enable consumers and merchants to conduct transactions using a digital wallet “stored on a chip of a smartcard or a secure element of a user device”... More
Shipments of NFC-ready POS terminals reached 47.8m units globally in 2019, bringing the total to 100.4m worldwide, according to Berg Insight... More
PARTNER NEWS: Blackhawk Network subsidiary One4all is using Dejamobile’s ReadyToTap Gifts & Rewards solution to make it possible for UK consumers and businesses to send a digital gift card directly to a recipient’s mobile phone — and for the recipient to then use it to make payments online and at contactless terminals in stores... More
Visa has unveiled a series of ‘tap to pay preferred’, ‘we are now cashless’, ‘how to pay contactless’ and ‘tap to pay encouraged’ decals, POS terminal stickers and toppers, table tents and mats to promote the use of contactless payments in stores... More
“While the full impact of Covid-19 on tap to pay adoption across the world is yet to be fully seen, early indications highlight a shift in consumer spend toward every day, essential segments where contactless usage is high, such as grocery and pharmacy,” Visa says... More
Safaricom and Visa join forces in seeking to expand access to digital payments for M-Pesa consumers and merchants — Safaricom — “The partnership will cover over 24 million M-Pesa customers, more than 173,000 Lipa Na M-Pesa merchants from Safaricom and more than 61m merchant locations throughout Visa’s global network, and over 3.4bn Visa cards in more than 200 countries and territories, subject to regulatory approval.”
Leaked screenshots of a new Google Pay debit card, to be issued by banks partnering with the search engine giant for its planned move into the US banking market, include mention of an option to use a digital version of the card “for Bluetooth mobile payments”... More
The contactless transaction limit in Switzerland and Liechtenstein is to be temporarily increased from 40 francs (US$41.60) to 80 francs (US$83.21) “in order to protect customers”... More
Visa and Mastercard are increasing the contactless payment limit in Canada by 150%, from C$100 (US$70) to C$250 (US$176)... More
The Australian payments industry has begun implementing an increase in the country’s contactless payments transaction limit, from A$100 (US$60) to A$200 (US$120)... More
US credit card payment volumes decreased by 7% in March 2020 compared with March 2019, Visa has reported, while cross-border transaction volumes have fallen 19%... More
Poland has doubled the country’s contactless card transaction limit from 50 zloty (US$11.85) to 100 zloty ($23.71)... More
Samsung Pay is now live in Kazakhstan, with the backing of nine local banks — Altyn Bank, Alfa Bank, ATF Bank, CenterCredit Bank, Eurasian Bank, ForteBank, Halyk Bank, Jýsan Bank and Sberbank... More
Google has agreed to pay Transport for London (TfL) £2m (US$2.56m) for the right to place Google Pay branding on all of London Underground’s 5,686 tap in/out card readers for a year... More
The European Commission is planning to create an integrated EU payments system that will “facilitate the use of national payment services across Europe and reduce the dependency from international card operators such as Visa or Mastercard,” an EU official has told Euractiv... More
Visa is planning the biggest changes to swipe fees in a decade — Bloomberg — “The company’s interchange rates — fees charged every time a consumer uses a card — will go up or down depending on the merchant and the way a consumer pays for their purchases, according to a document Visa sent to banks that outlines the changes. Higher rates are looming for transactions on e-commerce sites, while retailers in certain services categories, such as real estate and education, will see fees decline.”
Data on the latest adoption rates for contactless transactions, tokenization, transit payments and secure remote commerce has been made available by Visa CEO Al Kelly — along with details of the revenue model to be used by Plaid, which Visa is to acquire for $5.3bn... More
Visa is to acquire Plaid for US$5.3bn, in a move that CEO Al Kelly says “will put us at the epicentre of the fintech world, expanding our total addressable market and accelerating our long-term revenue growth trajectory”... More