A group of seven mobile payments service providers with a combined user base of 25 million people in nine European countries have formed a new association to deliver “interoperability of the mobile payment systems across national borders”... More
Saudi Payments, Saudi Arabia’s national payments infrastructure operator, is to use a combination of NFC and contactless payments, a new faster payments system and the introduction of a common QR code platform to reduce the use of cash and speed up its move towards a cashless society, managing director Ziad Al Yousef has told NFCW... More
Six European mobile wallet providers — Bluecode (Austria), ePassi (Finland), Momo Pocket (Spain), Pagaqui (Portugal), Pivo (Finland) and Vipps (Norway) — have adopted a QR code format from Chinese payment provider Alipay to ensure digital payment interoperability and improve the international reach of customers’ wallets as well as boosting sales, participants have told NFCW... More
Developing cross-border ticketing in public transport networks — Intelligent Transport — “Based on the concept of account-based ticketing, nationally differing ticketing systems can be linked without the need to change existing national standards. Key to the success of this is letting different systems coexist, but while introducing an interoperable layer that can connect the different existing national systems.”
NFC tags represent an “enormous growth opportunity” and are now “ready for the mainstream”, according to a new forecast by ABI Research which is available to download free of charge from the NFC World Knowledge Centre... More
Web Payment Security Interest Group Charter — World Wide Web Consortium — “The mission of the Web Payment Security Interest Group is to enhance the security and interoperability of web payments. The group pursues its mission by creating a forum for organizations to define areas of collaboration and identify gaps between existing technical specifications in order to increase compatibility among different technologies.”
The NFC Forum has released a new candidate specification that makes it easy for mobile payments services based on QR codes to add NFC functionality, giving “payment service providers and consumers the opportunity to take advantage of the simple and secure NFC-based payment solutions already in use worldwide.”... More
PARTNER NEWS: Combining convenience with security is the key to unlocking the next wave of NFC payments innovations, Sebastien Clamagirand, general manager of NXP’s payment and identification business, has told NFC World in an interview at the Trustech show in Cannes... More
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central bank, has issued the final set of guidelines for new rules designed to enable mobile wallet users to easily make payments and transfer funds to users of competing mobile wallet services... More
Singtel to launch mobile wallet tie-up with regional associates — The Straits Times — “The Singtel Group plans to roll out mobile wallet interoperability across its network of regional associates in Asia by mid-2018… Mobile wallet customers of Singtel and the group’s various associate telcos would then be able to make cashless payments in their home currency, using their home telco’s app, at physical merchants while abroad… Singtel’s goal is to bring the Philippines’ Globe, Indonesia’s Telkomsel and India’s Airtel on board from the second half of 2018 onwards, pending regulatory approval. Regulators have already given the green light for the partnership between Singtel’s Dash payments app and Thai counterpart myAIS.”
Tokenization has the potential to increase the security of a wide range of applications beyond payments, from healthcare to social security, logical access control and blockchain applications, Rambus explains in a new ebook which is now available to download from the NFC World Knowledge Centre... More
The increasing diversity of devices, services and players in the mobile payments ecosystem has led to the need for standards and certification to manage fragmentation, prevent fraud and ensure consistent user experience, GlobalPlatform’s Gil Bernabeu explains in a new paper now available to download from the NFC World Knowledge Centre... More
Mobile Contactless SEPA Card Payments Interoperability Implementation Guidelines (MCP IIGs) for public consultation — European Payments Council — “The EPC has facilitated the setting-up of a multi-stakeholder group covering the various sectors involved in the mobile payment ecosystem to develop a new version of the Mobile Contactless SEPA Card Payments Implementation Interoperability Guidelines (MCP IIGs), while leveraging the relevant documentation developed in standardisation and industry bodies.”
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation releases open-source software to support efforts that expand access to financial services in developing countries — Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — “The software is designed to provide a reference model for payment interoperability between banks and other providers across a country’s economy. It is available now, free-of-cost, for software developers to adapt and banks, financial service providers and companies to implement.”
PARTNER NEWS: Three STMicroelectronics ST25 NFC tag chips have been certified for performance and interoperability under the NFC Forum’s new NFC tag certification program, which is designed to ensure “consistent, compelling, and connected user experiences” across NFC tags, readers and handsets... More
Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies — Reserve Bank of India — “In line with the Vision for Payment and Settlement Systems in the country, the revised framework will pave the way for bringing interoperability into usage of PPIs [Prepaid Payment Instruments]. Interoperability amongst KYC-compliant PPIs shall be implemented within six months of the date of issuance of the revised Master Directions, which will be issued within a week, ie by October 11, 2017.”
PARTNER NEWS: NXP has announced a toolkit designed to make it easy for iOS 11 developers to take advantage of the NFC tag reading capabilities that are now supported by iPhones and unlock “the potential to now connect billions of consumer and industrial products to the Internet of Things (IoT)”... More
NFC Forum adds NFC tag certification to certification program — NFC Forum — “Tag/inlay, NFC reader and handset manufacturers for the first time will be able to test and verify the performance and interoperability of all the key components in the NFC ecosystem. Certification will help ensure that NFC tags, readers and handsets provide consistent, compelling and connected user experiences.”
Payments standards body EMVCo has updated its Payment Tokenisation Technical Framework to introduce the new roles of ‘token programme’ and ‘token user’, refine the roles of ‘token service provider’ and ‘token requestor’ and detail “their interrelationships within the global payments environment.”... More
PARTNER NEWS: Mobile chipset giant MediaTek has integrated STMicroelectronics’ NFC technology into its mobile platforms, creating “a complete solution for handset developers to design next-generation smartphones capable of supporting tightly integrated NFC mobile services”... More
