Passengers travelling on the Metrolink tram network in the UK city of Manchester can no longer purchase a one-day travel pass on Transport for Greater Manchester’s Get Me There mobile ticketing app and are instead being encouraged to use the network’s open loop contactless fare payment system that incorporates daily and weekly fare capping... More
Contactless
Football fans trial NFC ‘payment jerseys’ for contactless in-stadium purchases in Mexico
Football fans in Mexico can now make contactless payments from a stored-value digital wallet to buy Corona beer at selected matches at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium using an NFC chip attached to the inside of a soccer jersey... More
Cartes Bancaires certifies Dejamobile for software-only contactless payments acceptance
PARTNER NEWS: Dejamobile has become the first software-only contactless POS solution provider to be certified by French bank card association Groupement des Cartes Bancaires (CB), opening the way for merchants to begin piloting the technology for contactless CB card payments acceptance... More
Alaska Airlines to roll out NFC bag tags to speed up contactless luggage check-ins
Passengers travelling on flights operated by Alaska Airlines will be among the first in the US to be able to transfer their flight details to an NFC-enabled electronic bag tag attached to their checked luggage by tapping their NFC smartphone on the device, avoiding the need to print a physical tag when they arrive at the airport... More
Nearly 100m US consumers will be scanning QR codes by 2025
The number of US consumers who use their smartphone to scan QR codes to make contactless payments and for a wide range of other use cases such as scanning codes in print publications, on restaurant menus and in retail outlets will rise from 83.4 million in 2022 to 99.5 million by 2025, according to an Insider Intelligence forecast... More
More than one in three UK consumers now use a digital wallet
Just over a third of UK consumers now have a digital wallet (34%), but that proportion rises to more than two thirds among 18-34 year olds (64%) compared with just 18% among 54-65 year olds, a survey has found... More
More than half a million US students add NFC digital campus card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay
More than 500,000 students at 100 higher education facilities across the USA have now added an NFC-enabled digital campus card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay on their NFC smartphone or smartwatch, according to campus card provider Transact... More
Wireless charging mat lets users charge computer mice using NFC
Computer users will soon be able to charge a cable-free mouse using NFC simply by placing it on an NFC wireless charging mouse mat... More
Google begins rolling out its new multifunction mobile wallet to 39 countries
Google has begun rolling out a multipurpose digital wallet that enables users to store, use and present digital credentials such as identity cards and health passes as well as payment cards, transit and event tickets and hotel keys in 39 countries across Europe, the Americas and Asia... More
Tequila brand extends use of NFC tags for product authentication and customer engagement
US-based tequila brand Otaca is to add NFC tags that enable purchasers to authenticate their purchase, access information about the brand and place further orders by tapping the tag in the bottle cap with their Apple or Android NFC device to more than 50,000 bottles of its Reposado tequila... More
Law firm files class action against Apple on behalf of US payment card issuers over NFC chip access and service fees
US law firm Hagens Berman has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple alleging that, by preventing mobile wallets other than Apple Pay using the NFC chip in iPhone and Apple Watch to enable contactless payments, the company is in breach of federal antitrust law... More
Aldi trials first contactless store in continental Europe
Supermarket chain Aldi is trialling its first checkout-free contactless store in continental Europe in the Dutch city of Utrecht, enabling customers to enter the store by scanning an app, selecting items from the shelves and then leaving without needing to scan their purchases or use a conventional checkout... More
Central banks in five SE Asian countries to create common contactless QR payments zone
The central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are to develop an interoperable cross-border payments system that will enable residents of each country to use their mobile banking app to make QR code-based payments for goods and services when visiting any of the other territories... More
Luxury brand to use NFC to connect physical perfumes with unique NFTs
Luxury perfume brand Byredo is to let collectors create a customised scent in the form of a non-fungible token (NFT) using digital ingredients that will then be produced as a limited edition physical perfume and supplied in individually numbered bottles with an NFC tag that connects to the NFT... More
Festival food cart operator rolls out contactless payments acceptance on standard NFC phones
Food cart service provider FrostHead has provided its sellers at the Lollapalooza outdoor music festival in Sweden with the ability to accept contactless payments for food, drinks and earplugs using a software application that they can download onto a standard Android NFC smartphone... More
Apple gets patent for ‘biometric button assembly’ to bring Touch ID to Apple Watch
The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted Apple a patent for an “electronic device having sealed button biometric sensing system” that would enable users to unlock a device, authorise transactions and access apps by verifying their identity with their fingerprint on a wearable device such as an Apple Watch... More
Taiwanese visitors to Japan to make contactless payments with domestic stored value cards
Taiwanese visitors to Okinawa prefecture in Japan will soon be able to make contactless payments directly settled in New Taiwan Dollars for small-value purchases using their EasyCard stored-value smart payments and transit card... More
US merchants begin accepting in-store contactless payments on Apple iPhones
Merchants in the USA including fashion retailers Vince, Burton, G-Star and Scotch & Soda have begun enabling staff to accept in-store contactless payments on iPhones using Apple’s Tap to Pay software point of sale (sPOS) feature... More
Visa survey identifies capped contactless fare payments as key driver of more frequent public transportation usage
More than nine in ten public transport users worldwide expect transit services to offer contactless fare payment options (91%) and just under half prefer to make contactless payments for their transit fares (45%), according to Visa’s 2022 Future of Urban mobility survey... More
World Bank reports ‘global surge’ in digital payments during pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has driven a “global surge” in digital payments with two-thirds of adults worldwide now making or receiving digital payments, rising from 35% in 2014 to 57% in 2021 in developing economies and from 88% in 2014 to 95% in 2021 in high-income economies, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex 2021 database... More