Apple has added a further 35 financial institutions in the United States to its list of participating banks and credit unions, taking the total number of card issuers it works with to nearly 300... More
Mobile payments
Amazon’s Gauthier: NFC is “last century’s problem”
“Anyone working on NFC is focusing on last century’s problem,” Patrick Gauthier, the new vice president of payments at Amazon, has told Mashable in an interview in which he also indicates that he believes competitors in the mobile payments space — including Apple and Google — have “lost sight of what it is we’re here to do.” Until January, Gauthier headed up emerging retail services at PayPal, a company once anti-NFC which now appears to have changed its mind about the technology... More
Icahn: Apple Pay to generate US$3.3bn in revenues in 2017
Apple Pay will generate revenues of US$263m this year and that figure will increase to $3.3bn by the end of 2017, billionaire investor Carl Icahn has forecast... More
US millennials lead the way for mobile payments
Some 41% of US millennials aged between 18 and 34 are now using mobile payments, compared to 18% of 35- to 44-year-olds, 14% of 45- to 54-year-olds, 10% of 55- to 64-year-olds and 8% of those aged over 65, research from POS supplier Harbortouch has revealed... More
Starbucks denies mobile payment hack
Starbucks has issued a statement denying its mobile payment app has been hacked, following a report by investigative journalist Bob Sullivan... More
Axis to make 50,000 terminals contactless in India
India’s Axis Bank is to enable all of its 50,000 merchant point-of-sale terminals to accept contactless payments by the end of this year in order to “facilitate significant usage of contactless NFC-based cards issued by all banks”... More
Face++ raises $25m for selfie payments
Face++, the Chinese facial recognition technology startup behind Alibaba’s selfie payments service, has secured an additional $25m in a series B funding round, taking the total raised to $47m... More
Apple in buy out talks with Clinkle?
Apple has reportedly been in acquisition talks with troubled mobile payments startup Clinkle amidst claims that seven of the company’s staff quit their roles last week following frustration with CEO Lucas Duplan... More
Trader Joe’s gears up for Apple Pay
US grocery chain Trader Joe’s is reportedly gearing up to begin accepting Apple Pay NFC payments in its stores... More
Samsung Wallet to close on June 30th
Samsung is to discontinue its Samsung Wallet service on 30 June 2015 as it gears up to roll out Samsung Pay later in the year... More
Google to launch mobile buy buttons?
Google is expected to add buy buttons to search results pages on mobile devices in the coming weeks that will guide consumers to product pages where they can pick sizes, colours and shipping options before completing a purchase... More
Samsung picks Oberthur for mobile payments in Europe
Samsung has chosen Oberthur Technologies for the deployment of Samsung Pay mobile payments in Europe later this year, utilising the technology provider’s Pearl secure element embedded in Samsung S6 and S6 Edge devices. More
India gets PIN-free contactless payments
Contactless users in India can make payments of up to Rs2,000 (US$31) without using a PIN, following the Reserve Bank of India’s relaxation of its requirement for two-factor authentication... More
US mobile payments to hit $487bn
US mobile proximity payments will rise to US$487bn gross dollar volume (GDV) by 2020, up from $7.5bn GDV this year, Aite Group forecasts. “While mobile proximity payments will grow quickly as NFC distribution becomes universal and customers begin to use the platforms,” says author Thad Peterson, “mobile commerce will drive more transaction volume than mobile proximity payments in the next five years.”... More
Walmart to accept Alipay mobile payments in China
Walmart is to begin accepting Alipay mobile payments at 25 stores in Shenzhen, China, and the service is to go live in all of the chain’s 410 stores across 160 Chinese cities by the end of this year... More
Samsung ‘paid $250m for LoopPay’
Samsung paid about US$250m to acquire LoopPay, developer of the magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology that will form a key part of Samsung Pay when it launches later this year, according to Recode... More
Japanese carrier to secure mobile payments with iris scanning phone
Japan’s largest mobile network operator NTT Docomo has unveiled an NFC smartphone that comes equipped with an iris authentication system from Fujitsu that will let owners unlock the device and authenticate mobile payments just by looking at it... More
Canadian carriers MTS and SaskTel launch NFC payments with TD Bank
MTS and SaskTel have become the latest Canadian mobile network operators to launch NFC mobile payment services using EnStream, the joint venture between Bell Mobility, Telus and Rogers Communications put in place to act as a single connection point between the country’s card issuers and carriers... More
American Airlines Center gets NFC tablets for payments on the go
Employees at multi-purpose arena American Airlines Center in Dallas are to be given NFC tablets that will allow them to accept mobile and contactless credit card payments from visitors anywhere in the stadium... More
Orange Cash adds in-store mobile payments in Spain
Orange Spain is to launch a new version of its Orange Cash service allowing users to pay with their smartphone at Visa contactless point-of-sale terminals and make online payments using one-time generated virtual cards... More