Shell and Dunkin’ have launched the ‘Sip Dunkin’, Save at Shell’ scheme that rewards members of both retailers’ loyalty programmes with a 10 cents per gallon saving on their fuel purchase whenever they have bought five beverages at a Dunkin’ outlet... More
Iconic UK retailer M&S is expanding its mobile self-checkout service to 49 stores across London, following a successful pilot at six stores that saw a Mobile Pay Go transaction being made every three seconds during lunchtime trading... More
The Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTPW) has launched an app that lets passengers earn loyalty points that they can then exchange for free travel when they view or interact with personalised ads... More
Texas Capital Bank launches all-digital Bask Bank, offering savers American Airlines AAdvantage miles — Texas Capital Bank — “Traditional savings accounts return pennies on the dollar. Bask Bank changes that by rewarding savers with miles, enhancing their saving potential and providing them with choice, value, and the opportunity to experience travel and more through the AAdvantage program. Bask Bank will also offer several ways to earn AAdvantage bonus miles, including an account opening bonus of 5,000 AAdvantage miles, a feedback bonus and a variety of balance bonuses.”
Italy’s national postal service provider has added QR code-based payments to its mobile payments app, to support the country’s transition from cash to digital payments... More
A family-run vineyard in Italy has become the first in Europe to use NFC-equipped screw caps on its bottles to protect buyers from counterfeit wines... More
Russia’s Sberbank is launching an app for its Spasibo loyalty programme that will make it possible for customers to transfer their loyalty points to a friend or family member, either as a small gift or so they can “save up Spasibo points for a large purchase together”... More
PARTNER NEWS: NFCW readers are invited to join Dejamobile and speakers from Arion Bank, Crédit Agricole, GVS, Stocard, Tribe Payments and Valitor for two digital payments workshops taking place at the Paris Fintech Forum on the morning of 28 January 2020... More
Public transportation users in Sydney, Australia, are now able to use contactless bank cards, NFC phones or wearable devices to pay for travel across the entire Transport for New South Wales network, including bus services... More
PepsiCo has launched a loyalty programme that lets customers use their mobile phone to scan a code printed on drink bottles and snack bags to earn 10% cashback each time they buy both a drink and a snack — and receive their rewards as an automatic credit to their PayPal or Venmo account each time their balance reaches US$2... More
Users of Japanese rail operator JR East’s Suica stored value transit cards will soon be able to start collecting loyalty points when they use their account to pay for their journeys — and will receive four times as many points when they use Suica to make a payment with their mobile phone rather than a plastic card... More
Apple Card is now available to all US consumers, the iPhone maker has announced — and the 3% cashback offered to cardholders who use their card to make an Apple Pay mobile payment for an Apple product will now be available from “more merchants and apps”... More
Shoppers at 7-Eleven stores in New York can now use their mobile phones to self-checkout and pay for their purchases, the convenience store giant has announced. “Mobile Checkout takes convenience to the next level, letting customers in New York City skip the checkout.” More
Payment methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay will be used by US consumers to make transactions valued at a total of US$78.6bn this year, representing 1.6% of all US brick-and-mortar retail sales, according to a new forecast from 451 Research... More
LG has launched its LG Pay mobile payments service in the US, enabling owners of its G8 ThinQ smartphone to make payments via NFC in stores equipped with a contactless POS terminal — and in stores with a magnetic stripe terminal using Wireless Magnetic Communication (WMC)... More
Swedish P2P and online payments app Swish is moving into in-store payments with a pilot test of a Bluetooth box that can be added to merchants’ existing POS terminals to deliver “an NFC-like ‘tap and pay’ experience”... More
Data ‘R’ Us: Alibaba, JD.com seek to lock in merchant loyalty with new services — Reuters — “One of the first firms to join an Alibaba Group Holding Ltd programme that provides years of consumer shopping history, snack food chain, Bestore Co Ltd plans to link facial recognition technology with the e-commerce giant’s account data by the year’s end. For customers opting to have their facial data in Bestore’s systems, that means shop assistants will be able to check on what food they like the moment they enter one of its stores.”
Payments, food delivery apps launch games to woo users — Economic Times — “Payments apps and food delivery platforms are launching games to increase user base and stickiness… Paytm has found that more than 70% of its users play these games daily… In-app games, such as Zomato Cricket Cup, Swiggy Match Day Mania, Paytm Games and Tez Shots by Google Pay, are just a few examples.”
Parking payments specialist HonkMobile has unveiled a ‘virtual parking meter’ that uses Apple Pay’s new support for NFC tags to let iPhone users tap an NFC sticker to quickly make a payment via Apple Pay — without first needing to download an app or register for a service... More
Android Q Beta 4: Google Pay cards could live in power menu w/ ‘Cards & Passes’ — 9to5Google — “Cards will apparently appear as soon as the power button is long-pressed and users can then swipe through them, presumably to switch the card being used with NFC payments. Based on the description, this carousel will also be able to show things such as loyalty cards and tickets.”
