Consumers in Dubai can now use an app to gain access to Majid al Futtaim’s Carrefour City+ store in the Mall of the Emirates, select the products they want to purchase without needing to scan them and pay for them on their mobile phone without interacting with staff or using a checkout... More
Customers in Woolworths stores in Cape Town and Johannesburg can now browse, virtually test and order beauty products for home delivery by tapping in-store NFC tags with their mobile phone... More
Students and staff at Kindai University in the Japanese city of Osaka are testing a biometric payments service that enables them to authenticate payments with their face even when they are wearing a mask... More
Portuguese supermarket chain Continente has opened its first autonomous cashierless store in Lisbon, enabling customers to use a QR code generated in the company’s Labs app to access the shop and automatically pay for their purchases from their mobile phone without needing to scan their goods or use a checkout... More
Customers at a supermarket in the German city of Cologne owned by retail giant Rewe will soon be able to enter the store by scanning a QR code, selecting the items they wish to buy and paying for them from their mobile phone without needing to scan their purchases or use a checkout... More
Employees of French retail chain Monoprix are testing an automated self-service store that uses AI-based product recognition technology to enable them to select and pay for their products without going through a checkout... More
Convenience store giant Circle K is to add support for cashierless shopping at one of its Phoenix, Arizona, outlets, “with other stores to follow”... More
LG CNS is piloting a new payments solution that combines face recognition, a blockchain-based digital currency and AI technology to let shoppers enter an unmanned store, shop and check out — without needing to come into close contact with either employees or POS equipment... More
Royal Bank of Canada has added new features to its mobile app that make it quicker and easier for customers opening a new bank account at a branch to prove their identity... More
Nigeria’s Access Bank is to introduce a payments system that uses a combination of facial recognition and artificial intelligence to let customers make purchases at retail stores, Ventures Africa reports... More
Drivers pulling into any of more than 11,500 Exxon and Mobil gas stations across the US will be able to pay for their fuel from their vehicles from later this year, by simply saying “Alexa, pay for gas”... More
China’s subways embrace face-scan payments despite privacy concerns — AsiaOne — “Since the service began trials in September, nearly 200,000 commuters in Zhengzhou have elected to authorise face-scan payments using a local metro service app… While Zhengzhou is among dozens of Chinese cities to introduce such trials, it is the first to deploy the service across its entire subway network.”
New York Mets fans attending games at the team’s Citi Field home field can now purchase snacks and beverages at a self-checkout kiosk that uses a biometrics-based identity verification system to process payments — and check that buyers of alcoholic drinks are of legal drinking age... More
Chinese mobile device manufacturer Xiaomi has launched the Mi Band 4 NFC fitness tracker that supports contactless NFC payments and QR-based payments through AliPay and can be used as a key when combined with the company’s MI Smart Door Lock... More
Chinese technology and retail group Alibaba has opened a hotel which uses the facial recognition biometric to secure guests’ rooms and the lifts... More
Belfast tech startup using automated lip-reading to make user authentication systems more resistant to spoofing attacks — Liopa — “LipSecure works in conjunction with the vendor’s existing FR [facial recognition] system and prompts the user to repeat a random sequence of digits that appear on their screen. Liopa’s AI-based Visual Speech Recognition (VSR) technology checks if the digits have been spoken or mimed correctly and thus determines if there is a ‘live’ person present.”
Card issuers will no longer need to include a signature panel on the back of Mastercard products, the payments network has announced... More
Leading UK football club Manchester City has released an NFC wristband that focuses on delivering team news and stats to fans... More
SoftBank plans payments service for Japan by year-end — Bloomberg — “The service, a collaboration with Indian startup Paytm, will make extensive use of artificial intelligence for mobile payments and other financial services, the people said, asking to not be identified as the plans are private. An announcement is imminent, they said. Dozens of Paytm employees are working in Tokyo on getting the service up and running, one of the people said.”
Processing payment transactions using artificial intelligence messaging services — USPTO — “One or more embodiments use natural language processing to analyze messages from the user to the messaging bot, and from the messaging bot to the user, to identify a product and a request to purchase the identified product. Based on the identified product and the request to purchase the product, one or more embodiments initiate a payment transaction on behalf of the user based on a natural language conversation and without redirecting the user away from the communications session.”