UK online restaurant booking service Bookatable has integrated MyCheck mobile payments into its mobile app and will add pay-at-table functionality to more than 500 locations this summer, starting with Thai restaurant Busaba Eathai in London... More
Mobile payments
French government lays out contactless plans
The French government is to accelerate the acceptance of contactless payments in the country by requiring that all terminals installed after January 2016 must be contactless-enabled... More
NBO first to pilot contactless in Oman
National Bank of Oman (NBO) has become the first in the country to launch a contactless card pilot, in partnership with MasterCard... More
Visa Europe to participate in Apple Pay UK launch
Visa Europe has confirmed that it will play a part in the the UK launch of Apple Pay and will give debit, credit and reloadable prepaid cardholders access to the payment system... More
Apple Pay adds loyalty cards and expands to UK
Apple Pay will be available in the UK from July 2015, vice president of Apple Pay business Jennifer Bailey has announced at the iPhone maker’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Users of the mobile payments service will also be able to add store credit, debit and loyalty cards to their Apple mobile wallet from “this fall”. More
Carta and YellowPepper take HCE to Latin America
PARTNER NEWS: Carta Worldwide is to provide its host card emulation (HCE) technology to Latin American mobile payments specialist YellowPepper, allowing it to offer the “latest in mobile payments technology” to the region’s banks and merchants... More
Google misses out on transaction fee revenues
Google won’t earn any transaction fees from credit card issuers for Android Pay, unlike Apple which receives 0.15% of the value of each credit card transaction made with Apple Pay, sources have told The Wall Street Journal.“That is because Visa and MasterCard recently standardised their tokenization card-security service and made it free, preventing payments services from charging fees to issuers,” the newspaper reports... More
Samsung smartwatches to support Samsung Pay?
Samsung is planning to offer Samsung Pay mobile payments on the smartwatch devices it is scheduled to launch in the second half of this year... More
Apple Pay to launch in UK this summer?
Apple is reported to be planning to launch Apple Pay in the UK this summer, with an announcement expected today at the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference... More
UK retailers to go 100% contactless by 2020
“From the beginning of next year, any new payment terminal that gets deployed has to accept contactless,” MasterCard’s head of emerging payments products Mike Cowan told attendees at the company’s Future of Payments event in London this week, TechWeek Europe reports... More
Less than a quarter of top US retailers accept Apple Pay
Fewer than a quarter of the National Retail Federation’s list of the top 100 US retailers are now accepting Apple Pay, with nearly two-thirds saying they will not be accepting it this year and only four saying they have plans to add support in the next 12 months, research conducted by Reuters has found... More
Verizon announces investment in SimplyTapp
PARTNER NEWS: Verizon Ventures, the investment arm of US carrier Verizon, has revealed that it was the undisclosed lead investor in a Series B funding round for HCE specialist SimplyTapp that totalled US$6m... More
AT&T boss admits mobile payment failure
The CEO of AT&T has admitted that the US carrier’s mobile payment efforts have failed in light of the closure of Softcard, the joint venture between it, T-Mobile USA and Verizon... More
One in five Europeans expect to make daily mobile payments by 2020
One in five Europeans expects to use their mobile phone to make payments on a daily basis by 2020, growing from the one in ten who do so already today, research from Visa Europe has found... More
Kantar: 13% of US iPhone 6 owners have used Apple Pay
Some 13% of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners in the US have used Apple Pay and 11% are planning to do so, a survey conducted by Kantar Worldpanel has revealed... More
MasterCard ready to “switch on” Apple Pay in Europe
MasterCard is “absolutely ready” to switch on Apple Pay in the UK and Europe and is just waiting for the iPhone maker’s green light... More
Pinterest integrates Apple Pay into Buyable Pins
Visual discovery app Pinterest is to let its users make payments through Apple Pay on its platform by clicking on Buy buttons that will be integrated into a retailer’s page, including those from Macy’s, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom... More
Gazprombank pilots NFC tickets
Russia’s Gazprombank and MasterCard are piloting NFC mobile and contactless card payments for transit fares using PayPass terminals across the K-39 bus route in St Petersburg... More
Execs look to disrupt payments value chain
Nearly half (44%) of payment executives globally cite reducing the number of fee collectors in the payments value chain as their “top opportunity”, ranking higher than targeted offers (41%) and mobile (39%), ACI Worldwide and Ovum reveal... More
Apple Pay added to 12 banks
Apple has added a further 12 US banks and credit unions to its list of participating financial institutions... More