Visitors to the recent Nashville Predators WineFest in Tennessee in the USA were able to access exclusive digital content provided by nearly 90 retailers taking part in the fundraising event by tapping NFC tags with their NFC-enabled smartphone... More
Transport for Wales (TfW) has issued a tender inviting suppliers to propose and develop a national Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) app that will enable door-to-door journey planning and payments for bus, rail, coach and taxi fares as well as for bicycle and e-scooter hire, car sharing and demand-responsive transport schemes... More
Members of the Cool Chain Association (CCA) have completed a pilot test of an NFC-based solution to the problem of how to monitor refrigerated fresh produce in transit to ensure it has been maintained at the correct temperature and will still have a good shelf life when it arrives in stores... More
NFC tags represent an “enormous growth opportunity” and are now “ready for the mainstream”, according to a new forecast by ABI Research which is available to download free of charge from the NFC World Knowledge Centre... More
PARTNER NEWS: An RFID expert at NXP has explained how UHF RFID and NFC will be key building blocks in bringing about retail’s autonomous future in an article on the company’s website... More
Wearable-only payments are being introduced at three of the bars at Melbourne’s Albert Park race track for this year’s Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix, with plans to expand the service to the entire event in subsequent years... More
The percentage of payments made with a mobile phone in UK stores has jumped from 1.3% in Q3 2016 to 5.6% in Q3 2018, an analysis of 190m card transactions has shown... More
Singapore Post has equipped each of its 1,000 mail carriers with a mobile app that they can use to track their deliveries by scanning NFC tags the national postal service has attached to 15,000 delivery points and ‘letterbox nests’ across the island... More
Adding payments capabilities to watches and fitness trackers deliver benefits beyond simply meeting customer demand for new and innovative products, Barclaycard’s Adam Herson says... More
A US startup has demonstrated a way to prepare packaged food items “without a distracting trip to the kitchen”, using an induction pad and products bearing NFC tags that tell the base unit how to heat them... More
Google and Mastercard cut a secret ad deal to track retail sales — Bloomberg — “For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the US. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for… Google paid Mastercard millions of dollars for the data, according to two people who worked on the deal.”
AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon unveil next-generation mobile authentication platform details — AT&T — “This highly secure solution will deliver a cryptographically verified phone number and profile data for users of authorized applications with their consent. Authentication security is strengthened by processing unique attributes such as a network verified mobile number, IP address, SIM card attributes, phone number tenure, phone account type and more. In addition, advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities will be used to help assess risk and protect customers. Registered developers will be able to submit applications through a system using private and permissioned blockchain technology to help ensure application integrity.”
A 20-page ebook that shows how developers and product designers are using NFC to deliver next generation user experiences in transportation, retail, marketing and product authentication, and the Internet of Things is now available to download from the NFC World Knowledge Centre... More
Thinfilm and GlaxoSmithKline bring NFC technology to leading over-the-counter brand Flonase — Thinfilm — “GSK introduced interactive ‘smart’ Flonase shelves in retail stores across Canada in an effort to educate consumers about the new product and guide them in their purchasing decision… The cloud-based platform integrates with the NFC hardware, enabling GSK to manage tags remotely, deliver custom messaging and content, view real-time consumer tapping activity, and develop valuable consumer insights through built-in analytics functionality.”
Carrefour unveils digital wallet, teams up with China UnionPay to develop mobile payment ecosystem — Yicai Global — “Europe’s largest retailer, France-based Carrefour SA, has introduced its own mobile wallet dubbed CarrefourPay and joined hands with China UnionPay, a bankcard provider, to build a mobile payment ecosphere… The cross-industry partnership will see both firms working together in such areas as general payment platforms, membership systems, secure payments, big data analysis and smart retail.”
Ant Financial plans Alipay feature to connect merchants and customers — China Daily — “The ‘Life Account’, embedded in the Alipay app, allows its 520 million users to search nearby merchants, receive discount coupons, make appointments and conduct payments… It also helps business and social entities tap into their key clients by identifying their location and consumption preferences.”
Singapore’s postal service provider SingPost is rolling out 50,000 NFC tags to delivery and collection points across the island and is to equip 1,000 postmen with NFC smartphones to “raise postal service quality and improve operational efficiency”... More
NXP has announced that its Android Things platform now supports the new Google Cloud IoT Core, enabling enterprise and city developers to use NXP’s platform “to help create a smart, interconnected system of devices that are securely managed and provisioned through the Google Cloud”. More
IBM is to integrate Visa Token Service into its Watson IoT cognitive technology platform to enable payments to be embedded into “any device connected to the Internet of Things (IoT)”, with all of IBM’s Watson IoT Platform customers gaining access to Visa payment services via IBM’s cloud service — rather than businesses needing to be approached on a one-by-one basis... More
The number of monthly US Apple Pay credit card transactions conducted in-app, online and at the in-store point of sale grew by 50% between December 2015 and December 2016, research released by consumer spending analytics portal TXN reveals, with mobile apps and websites attracting the highest proportion of transactions... More