MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson has outlined more of the consortium’s plans for its CurrentC mobile wallet in a keynote presentation at the Money2020 event in Las Vegas, confirming that banks will be able to add open loop payment cards to the service when it goes live in 2015... More
Dutch startup LoyaltyGrid has unveiled a solution that lets luxury brands use NFC tags embedded in product packaging to guarantee the authenticity of their products — and deliver rewards, discounts, exclusive content, invitations to special events and other incentives directly to their customers... More
MCX is now open to supporting both NFC and Bluetooth Low Energy for payments and is in conversation with credit card issuers about opening up its CurrentC mobile wallet to payment cards, CEO Dekkers Davidson and COO Scott Rankin have told reporters... More
A new open source software project designed to help banks offer tokenized card payments has been launched by HCE specialist SimplyTapp... More
Tokyo-based jeweller Core Jewels is taking orders for the world’s first high-end diamond jewellery products that come equipped with NFC... More
Jason Hogg, founder and former CEO of Revolution Money and a co-inventor of the technology behind American Express’ Serve and Bluebird services, has raised US$6.2m for Hangit, a location-based messaging platform that, he told NFC World+, aims to give small merchants “the same skills and capabilities a large retailer would have with their marketing platforms.”... More
Taiwanese computer maker Acer is to join Apple and Samsung in introducing a payment service for users of its mobile phones and wearable devices, Want China Times reports... More
Hong Kong mobile network operator SmarTone has introduced ST Beacon, a marketing service that lets retailers send promotional messages to customers with an Android or iOS device using Bluetooth... More
Royal Bank of Canada’s cloud-based NFC wallet is now available to Virgin Mobile subscribers and to customers with a BlackBerry Z10 or Z30 mobile phone, the bank has announced... More
PARTNER NEWS: NXP has unveiled a dynamic NFC chip that can be used by electronic device makers to let consumers use their mobile phone as a remote user interface “rather than relying on expensive touchscreens or WiFi connectivity for wireless data exchange on home electronics.”... More
Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), the mobile payments venture co-owned by US retail chains with collective revenues of more than US$1 trillion annually, has announced that its payments, loyalty and offers platform is to be called CurrentC — and provided the first details of how the service will work when it rolls out to 110,000 merchant locations across the US in 2015... More
Visa has unveiled a suite of services designed to “facilitate secure payments across a broad range of internet-connected devices and wearables”... More
Amazon Wallet, an Android app that lets users store gift cards and loyalty cards on their mobile phone, is now available to download from Google Play and the Amazon Appstore... More
Westpac has begun a host card emulation (HCE) pilot in New Zealand, enabling customers’ credit and debit card details to be securely stored in the cloud and then used at the point of sale to make mobile payments on their Android NFC device... More
IBM and Monitise have formed a strategic alliance designed to help financial institutions deliver cloud-based mobile banking, payments and commerce solutions to their customers... More
BBVA has become the first bank to launch a commercial NFC payments service that makes use of Visa’s cloud-based payments specifications... More
Supermarket giant Carrefour and convenience store group Nisa are piloting a new technology that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons attached to trolleys and baskets to track a shopper’s journey around the store... More
BioCatch has raised US$10million to expand its behavioural biometric authentication platform... More
UK-based startup Tap2Tag has introduced a range of NFC wristbands, key fobs, cards and stickers that can be used to instantly retrieve a person’s medical history and associated information in an emergency... More
POS maker Verifone has expanded its Way2Ride mobile payments service to Philadelphia, allowing taxi users in the US city to pay for their journey using a sound-based proximity mobile communications technology... More