China UnionPay (CUP), the country’s official card payments network, has issued notifications to its member banks to tell them “to avoid working with third-party payment services like Alipay”, Want China Times reports... More
ecommerce
EcoCash takes mobile money to the point of sale
EcoCash, Africa’s second largest mobile money provider with 3.7m users, is to offer customers in Zimbawe a MasterCard debit card linked to their EcoCash wallet... More
Target includes Apple Pay in mobile app
MCX member Target has integrated Apple Pay into its mobile app but is not accepting payments via Apple Pay in its stores, the retailer has told NFC World+... More
Starbucks claims a 90% share of the US mobile payments market
Starbucks accounted for more than 90% of all mobile transactions in the US last year, the coffee chain’s CEO Howard Schultz has revealed during a fourth quarter earnings call in which he also set out plans to continue to dominate the mobile payments space. More
23% of Canadians have made a mobile payment
Almost a quarter of Canadians (23%) have now made a mobile payment in-store with nearly a third (29%) having used their device to make an online purchase, new research from PayPal Canada has found... More
Twitter preps for Buy button launch
Twitter is planning to launch its new Buy button in the first quarter of 2015, VentureBeat reports, to let users make a purchase directly from a Tweet... More
Alipay expands to USA
Chinese online payments giant Alipay is offering US merchants the ability to accept payments from Chinese shoppers via a new service called ePass... More
Mobile network operators partner with Boku to bring carrier billing to the physical world
Carrier billing provider Boku has partnered with UK mobile network operators O2, EE and Vodafone to make it possible for customers to charge public transport tickets, takeaway food, cups of coffee and other “click and collect” physical world purchases to their mobile phone bill... More
iPad to get Apple Pay support?
A text string in the beta release of iOS 8.1 spotted by a MacRumours reader appears to confirm reports that Apple will add a Touch ID fingerprint sensor to its next iPad, which may ship as soon as next month, and make it possible for owners to use Apple Pay to make online purchases... More
Amazon adds Wishlist tweets
Amazon customers can now add items to their wish list directly from Twitter... More
Video demos show how Apple Pay users will make a payment with the iPhone 6
Videos of Apple staff demonstrating how Apple Pay will be used to make payments in stores and for in-app purchases have now been made available, providing further details of how the new mobile payments service will work... More
Transcript: Apple CEO Tim Cook and SVP Eddy Cue introduce Apple Pay mobile payments and NFC
“It’s all about the wallet,” Apple CEO Tim Cook explained during the unveiling of Apple Pay mobile payments and the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch with NFC on 9 September... More
Twitter adds Buy button
“Today we are beginning to test a new way for you to discover and buy products on Twitter,” group product manager Tarun Jain has announced in a blog post... More
Alipay partners with Huawei to add biometric security to mobile payments
Chinese online payments giant Alipay is working with Huawei to enable users of the phone maker’s new Ascend Mate 7 handset to secure their mobile payments using a fingerprint sensor built into the phone... More
Visa adds Checkout partners
Visa has signed agreements with a wide range of new partners that will make its new Visa Checkout service available to more than 4m online merchants across the US... More
PayPal introduces one touch mobile payments
PayPal has launched One Touch, a mobile payments solution that lets consumers make payments in supported apps with a single touch... More
US merchant groups call for creation of open tokenization standards
Leading merchant groups in the US have come together to call for the creation of an alternative set of open standards for tokenized payments that would be managed by an independent body such as ISO or ANSI — rather than by the payments industry. More
Facebook closes gifts business
Facebook is to close down its gifts service on August 12, Techcrunch reports... More
Korean banks accelerate mobile wallet plans
Korea’s banks are making a renewed push on mobile payments in the face of increasing competition from outside the financial services sector, Korea Bizwire reports, citing Hana Bank’s ‘Hana N Wallet’, Industrial Bank of Korea’s ‘IBK One Money’, and Shinhan Bank’s ‘Zoo Money’ and ‘My Shinhan Pay’ services... More
Twitter tests ‘buy now’ button
A ‘buy now’ button has been seen on Twitter, leading to speculation the social media giant is trialling a new ‘in-tweet’ ecommerce service, Re/code says... More