Merchants in South Korea can now opt to accept Apple Pay payments on their smartphone without needing to purchase and install NFC readers at the point of sale as a number of new or upgraded software POS solutions roll out across the country... More
The World Expo 2025 in the Japanese city of Osaka will be the first world’s fair to be entirely cashless and is developing a dedicated blockchain-enabled Expo Digital Wallet that visitors will be able to use to make contactless payments with their smartphone both inside and outside the venue as well as after the event... More
Passengers on buses in North Wales can now make contactless fare payments on services run by 25 different local operators with their debit or credit card using an interoperable fare-capped ticketing system rolled out across nearly 200 routes in the region... More
Residents of Singapore and Malaysia can now make contactless QR code-based payments for goods and payments in either country using an interoperable cross-border payments system launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM)... More
The number of payment cards issued via digital card issuance platforms worldwide will increase from 500m in 2023 to more than 1.3bn by 2027, according to a Juniper Research forecast... More
Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) is to integrate its TransitLink and EZ-Link ticketing and travel card services in order to “simplify and streamline the ticketing experience” and enable transit users to access “a range of ticketing and card-related services through a single interface”... More
Google Wallet has launched in Japan, enabling users to store and use their credit, debit, transit and loyalty cards, boarding passes, tickets and other digital credentials on their Android NFC smartphone or Wear OS smartwatch... More
PARTNER NEWS: STMicroelectronics has released an NFC chip that supports active waveshaping and heartbeat detection, enabling developers and manufacturers to create smaller and more efficient contactless payment solutions and ensure devices comply with EMVCo 3.1 specifications... More
Passengers travelling on rail, bus, tram and subway services across the whole of Austria can now make contactless end-to-end fare payments for single or multi-modal journeys with two swipes on their smartphone screen using a ticketing function added to the Austrian Federal Railways ÖBB Tickets app... More
Samsung and Naver Financial have launched an integrated mobile payments service in South Korea that enables Naver Pay users to make in-store payments with their smartphone at outlets accepting Samsung Pay and Samsung Pay users to make online payments at ecommerce merchants supporting Naver Pay... More
Apple Pay has launched in South Korea with support for Mastercard, Visa and local debit and credit cards issued by Hyundai Card... More
Passengers travelling on services operated by Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) will soon be able to make contactless fare payments with their physical or digital credit card as well as an Octopus transit card or a digital QR code ticket on their smartphone... More
Passengers using rapid transit services operated by Kochi Metro in the Indian state of Kerala will soon be able to make contactless parking payments with the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) as part of a digital rupee pilot programme launched by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)... More
More than eight in ten consumers in Singapore now use contactless cards (82%) and the widespread use of and preference for contactless card payments is one of the key drivers behind the country’s “shift towards becoming a cashless nation”, according to a Visa report... More
Consumers in Italy used their smartphones or wearable devices to make in-store contactless payments worth a total of €16.3bn (US$17.5bn) in 2022, an increase of 122% compared with 2021, according to the Innovative Payments Observatory (IPO) at Milan Polytechnic University... More
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is to enable citizens entitled to financial support under its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri and Oklahoma to receive benefits and make NFC or QR code payments for eligible purchases on their mobile device... More
The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has issued regulations governing payment card tokenization on mobile apps that enable banks and payment service providers to allow customers to make contactless payments with digital cards stored in mobile wallets including Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay... More
More than four in ten transit passengers worldwide say that tapping their own debit or credit card to make open loop contactless fare payments is their preferred fare payment option (42%), followed by tapping a card stored in their mobile wallet (39%), using a closed loop transit card (38%), cash (31%) and app-based payment (29%), according to a Visa survey... More
The Australia and New Zealand Bank (ANZ) is to pilot the use of a prototype central bank digital currency (CBDC) for offline transactions using pre-loaded contactless cards at RMIT University in the Australian city of Melbourne and Southern Cross University in New South Wales... More
Passengers travelling on bus and trolleybus services across the Tampa Bay region of Florida in the US can now make contactless fare payments using their physical contactless credit, debit or prepaid card or via Apple Pay or Google Pay on their NFC smartphone or wearable... More