Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Alipay parent Ant Financial have each invested RMB3bn (US$483m) into Koubei, a joint venture that will let consumers order and pay for local services in China using their smartphone, “with an initial focus on the food and beverage segment”... More
Mobile payments
$4bn mobile money transfer revenue by 2018
Revenue from mobile money transfer services will hit US$2bn this year, doubling to $4bn by 2018, Juniper Research says, citing Africa as the market leader... More
India offers tax break for electronic payments?
Merchants in India accepting electronic payments could be offered a tax rebate, a government proposal suggests... More
30% of donors use contactless card during London charity trial
Nearly a third of shoppers at Westfield London shopping centre who donated to charity during a 100-day pilot put in place by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), Save the Children and Visa Europe Collab used their contactless card, as did one in five who donated at one of the city’s Costa coffee shop counter collection points... More
Canadian carriers sign up for independent Suretap platform
Canadian carrier Rogers has spun off its Suretap NFC mobile wallet service as a separate company, with the brand now operating independently and open to other carriers... More
Spanish supermarket chain Bonpreu rolls out mobile payments to 170 stores
Spanish supermarket chain Bonpreu is to roll out a mobile payments service to 170 stores, using a platform developed by Dinube that combines proprietary tokenization algorithms, NFC and biometric fingerprint security... More
Kiev subway goes contactless
The Ukrainian capital of Kiev has become the fifth city in the world, after London, St Petersburg, Chicago and Bucharest, to allow fares to be paid with open loop contactless cards... More
Almost one in ten have made in-store mobile wallet payments
Some 8% of global mobile users have made an in-store mobile wallet payment either using NFC or via an app in the last six months, research from trade body Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) and Wirecard has revealed... More
Contactless plan for London taxis
A proposal from Transport for London (TfL) explores whether contactless payments “with cards and other payment methods” should be accepted in all taxis across the city... More
Twin Peaks offers mobile payments with MyCheck
US sports bar chain Twin Peaks will offer mobile payments through an integration with MyCheck at its locations in August... More
China UnionPay to take NFC to Hong Kong
China UnionPay has invested an undisclosed sum in Jetco, the largest ATM network operator in Hong Kong and Macau... More
Supenta seeks funding for NFC gaming smartphone case
Mobile gaming provider Supenta is raising funds on Kickstarter for an NFC-enabled smartphone case with a built-in game controller that fits on to a smartphone device and uses energy harvesting technology to power its components... More
Boston Fed explores tokenization in the US
The Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup (MPIW) of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has published a white paper providing an overview of the current US payment tokenization landscape for mobile and digital commerce... More
Barclays and Starbucks promote contactless in UK
Barclays customers can upgrade the size of their Starbucks coffee for free at participating locations in the UK when using their contactless card to pay until the end of June... More
Chile stadiums offer MasterCard Qkr! app
Visitors to Chile’s National, Estadio Monumental David Arellano and La Portada stadiums during the Copa America football tournament this month will be the first in Latin America to place orders and pay for food with their mobile phones using MasterCard’s Qkr... More
ING to launch HCE in the Netherlands
ING is to launch a mobile payments service based on host card emulation (HCE) in the Netherlands this summer following a final test with a group of the bank’s employees... More
30 more banks add Apple Pay
Apple has added a further 30 US banks and credit unions to the list of financial institutions that support Apple Pay... More
Almost one in six US consumers are using mobile wallets
Almost one in six US consumers (15%) have used a mobile wallet in the past six months, up from 9% in the same period in 2013, and an additional 22% are likely to adopt mobile wallet functionality in the coming six months, a study released by market research and consulting firm Chadwick Martin Bailey has found... More
Starbucks expands Mobile Order & Pay
Starbucks has rolled out its Mobile Order & Pay service to 21 more states in the southern and central United States... More
Sequent closes funding round
Secure NFC specialist Sequent Software has closed a funding round for an undisclosed sum that will be used to support its expansion into global markets... More