Mobile network operator Airtel Ghana has partnered with Verifone Mobile Money to roll out NFC-enabled devices to Airtel merchants that will act as terminals, allowing more than 1.5 million registered Airtel Money users to make payments with their phone... More
Mobile payments
Denmark government aims for cashless society
The government in Denmark has proposed doing away with the obligation for retailers in the country to accept payment in cash, in an attempt to replace it with other methods such as plastic cards and mobile payments... More
Australia leads the way for contactless ownership and usage
Two thirds of Australians are now aware they own a contactless payment card and 53% have made a contactless transaction, research released by RFi Group has revealed, taking the country to the top of a leaderboard for both contactless awareness and usage rates... More
Nepal Bank to launch NFC and tokenization in July
Nepal Bank is set to become the first in the country to launch an NFC mobile payment service, using a solution provided by Nuspay that also makes use of tokenization... More
US in-store mobile payments to hit $54bn by 2019
Mobile proximity payments — those made by consumers at the physical point of sale using a mobile device — in the US will total US$54bn by 2019, Javelin Strategy and Research has projected... More
Payments veteran Buffy Duke joins Carta
PARTNER NEWS: Transaction technology provider Carta Worldwide has hired Elizabeth “Buffy” Duke as its vice president of business development... More
Apple Pay signs up first casino resort
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas has become the first casino resort to announce support for Apple Pay... More
Tony Sabetti joins CPI as NFC lead
Industry veteran Tony Sabetti has joined CPI Card Group to lead its mobile and NFC market initiatives... More
LevelUp adds direct carrier billing
LevelUp has added a direct carrier billing option from Danal to its NFC and QR code-based in-store mobile payments system... More
Starbucks opens express store with mobile POS ordering
Visitors to Starbucks’ newly opened express store on Wall Street in New York are being met by one of the coffee chain’s employees upon entry, who then takes their order using a handheld device... More
EMV claims 32% of global card-present transactions
Some 32% of all chip card-present transactions conducted globally between January and December 2014 used the EMV chip card standard, EMVCo has revealed, with adoption rates of EMV payment cards increasing in every region worldwide to total 3.4bn by the end of last year. More
Apple Pay now live at more than 240 banks
Apple has added a further 24 financial institutions to its list of participating banks and credit unions, taking the total number of card issuers it works with to more than 240... More
Nearly half of payment cards shipped in 2014 were contactless
Contactless technology was built into more than 42% of smart payment cards shipped in 2014, up from 37% in 2013, the Smart Payment Association has revealed... More
Barclaycard’s bPay band set for relaunch
Barclaycard is to shut down its first generation bPay prepaid contactless wristband at the end of the month and will launch “a newly designed wristband that’s lighter, slimmer and comes in a choice of colours… in a couple of months”... More
AMS picks up award for NFC chip
AMS has won a Sesames award in the emerging payments category at Cartes America for its AS39230 BoostedNFC IC, the chip used by Apple in its iPhone 6 and Apple Watch devices... More
Home Depot to accept Apple Pay in 2,000 stores
US retail giant Home Depot is planning to offer Apple Pay at its more than 2,000 stores, a rollout that would make it the largest retailer yet to accept the mobile payments service — though a deal with Apple is not yet in place... More
O2 buys out Weve partners and drops mobile payment plans
O2, one of the three UK mobile network operators that formed the mobile commerce joint venture Weve three years ago, has bought out partners EE and Vodafone to operate the brand as a wholly-owned subsidiary — and has confirmed to NFC World that it has abandoned Weve’s mobile payment ambitions... More
“iPad Pro” to include NFC?
Apple is rumoured to be working on a larger iPad which will include NFC, potentially turning the tablet into an Apple Pay POS terminal... More
Qualcomm and NXP team up for NFC on Snapdragon platforms
Qualcomm Technologies is working with NXP to integrate NXP’s NFC and embedded secure element (eSE) solutions into reference designs for its Snapdragon 800, 600, 400 and 200 processor-based platforms, mobile chipsets which already lie at the heart of more than one billion devices... More
84% of banks and retailers plan to invest in mobile payment technology
The “overwhelming majority” of financial institutions and retailers are currently investing or planning to invest in new payment technologies within the next 18 to 24 months, with online (86%) and mobile payment technologies (84%) topping the list, a survey by payments provider ACI and IT consultants Ovum has found... More