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
UK bank NatWest is trialling a ‘reverse vending machine’ that enables consumers to securely recycle unwanted plastic payment, gift and loyalty cards as well as card readers and plastic bottles at locations across London... More
The number of credit cards issued via digital card issuance platforms worldwide will rise from 120m in 2023 to more than 320m by 2027, according to a Juniper Research forecast... More
The Sella banking group in Italy is piloting a biometric credit card that enables users to authenticate both contactless and contact payments with their fingerprint with selected customers of its subsidiary consumer credit company Sella Personal Credit... More
Global payment card shipments will total 3.029bn in 2022, falling slightly from the total of 3.11bn cards shipped during 2021 because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing disruption to the global chip supply, according to a forecast by ABI Research... More
Delta Air Lines passengers in the USA can now apply for a contactless credit card which is the first to have been made using recycled aircraft metal... More
The number of digital loyalty programme memberships that offer consumers rewards and incentives such as discounts, vouchers, cashback and reward points will grow by 33% from 24bn worldwide in 2022 to more than 32bn in 2026, according to a forecast by Juniper Research... More
The price of EMV-compliant chips supplied to contactless payment card manufacturers increased by more than 50% in 2021 and is expected to rise by more than 20% during 2022 with the overall cost to card issuers for finished first-use plastic cards rising by between 5% and 20% during 2021, according to US research firm Nilson Report... More
More than one in two consumers worldwide prefer using a physical payment card to using cash or a digital wallet when making in-person purchases (53%), a survey has revealed... More
PARTNER NEWS: The acquisition of Antelop Solutions by Entrust will enable the development of more comprehensive solutions for the issuance of both digital and physical payment cards and offer customers “true digital-first payment credentials with physical card synergies that fully align with consumer expectations for simplicity and security,” the companies have revealed... More
Disruption in global chip supply is threatening the issuance of up to 1bn payment cards over the next 18 months, with 347m cards at risk of not being issued in the second half of 2021 and up to 740m in 2022 because of “significant chip shortages”, according to an ABI Research forecast... More
Customers of Hong Kong-based virtual bank Mox can now apply for an “all-in-one” numberless payments card that they can choose to use as either a debit or a credit card whenever they make a transaction... More
Some 65.5% of US consumers would pay for a biometric credit card that has a built-in fingerprint reader for authenticating payments, according to a survey of American credit card users... More
Customers of BBVA Mexico can now apply for a ‘blank’ biometric credit card that enables them to authenticate payments with their fingerprint... More
Passengers on New York subway and bus services have tapped their contactless bank card or mobile wallet to pay their fares using the Omny open loop fare payment system more than 50m times since the service launched in May 2019, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has announced... More
The UK is to increase the limit for contactless transactions from £45 (US$63) to £100 (US$140), the UK Treasury has announced... More
Passengers using public transport across the Swedish capital of Stockholm can now make tokenized contactless payments for single adult fares on metro, rail, bus, tram and boat services by tapping their debit or credit card or smartphone at a ticket reader... More
The total value of the global plastic cards market has fallen by US$3bn over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the number manufactured worldwide falling by 19.7% from 37.1bn in 2019 to 29.8bn in 2020, according to the International Card Manufacturers Association (ICMA)... More
BNP Paribas Visa Premier card customers will soon have the option of upgrading to a biometric payment card for an additional fee of €24 (US$29) a year, the French bank has revealed... More
Nine in ten card payments made in UK stores during 2020 (88.6%) were contactless and the average contactless user made 141 transactions worth a total of £1,640 (US$2,241) over the course of the year, according to Barclaycard... More
