Standard Bank, one of South Africa’s largest financial services groups, has launched a service that allows small merchants to accept mobile payments by simply placing a QR code at their point of sale, with no POS terminal required... More
Mobile payments
Total gas stations offer mobile payments in Uganda
Customers at 45 Total gas stations in Uganda can now use their Airtel Money account to pay for fuel and services as well as make in-store purchases with their mobile phone... More
Morgan Stanley predicts Apple will include NFC in iPhone 6 — and NXP will supply the controller chips
“We see growing evidence Apple will adopt NFC as a core part of its mobile payments strategy,” a new report from investment firm Morgan Stanley says — and evidence suggests that NXP has already won the contract to supply NFC controller chips for the iPhone 6... More
Sberbank to launch HCE payments in Russia
Russia’s Sberbank, Europe’s third largest bank with more than 100million customers, has begun piloting NFC payments in Moscow using embedded secure elements... More
Juniper predicts 1.5bn mobile wallets in 2018
There will be more than 1.5billion mobile wallets in use around the world by 2018, according to a new forecast from Juniper Research, representing one in five handsets and up from one in 10 at the end of 2013... More
PayPal tests beacons
PayPal Beacon, a mobile payment service that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons to let shoppers make “hands free” payments, is now undergoing pilot testing in Palo Alto... More
Square’s finances revealed
Mobile point-of-sale provider Square lost US$100m in 2013 but is making a 34% gross margin on its processing business, according to leaked internal documents seen by Fortune... More
mPOS use to soar
The number of installed mobile point-of-sale devices is set to grow fivefold to reach 51m by 2019, or 46% of the overall POS market, ABI Research says... More
Google Play adds PayPal
Google Play users in 12 countries can now charge the cost of their purchases to their PayPal account... More
SMEs ready to embrace mPOS
The use of mobile point-of-sale solutions by small businesses in Europe will take off dramatically in 2014, according to a survey of 2,000 SMEs commissioned by Visa Europe... More
White paper sets out benefits of white label mobile payments
“Building a Foundation for Mobile Payment”, a white paper from Datacard, explains why banks and other card issuers must advance their mobile payments strategy quickly and demonstrates the benefits of taking a white-label approach to mobile payment platforms... More
TD Canada Trust launches NFC mobile payments with support from all three major carriers
TD Canada Trust, the retail banking arm of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, has become the first in Canada to offer an NFC mobile payment solution that is supported by the country’s three major wireless networks: Bell, Rogers and Telus... More
Isis reports 20,000 new mobile wallet users a day
Isis saw its user adoption growth rate double last month and is now adding an average of 20,000 new users a day, Michael Abbott, CEO of the US carrier-led NFC venture, has revealed... More
Bank sends money to Facebook friends
Customers of Singapore’s OCBC Bank can now send up to S$100 a day to any of their Facebook friends from their phone, using a new Pay Anyone feature in the bank’s mobile app... More
Square exits mobile wallet business
US mobile payments provider Square is pulling out of the consumer mobile wallet business and its Square Wallet app is no longer available to new customers to download... More
Contactless card shipments double
A total of 450million contactless cards, twice the number produced in 2012, were shipped in 2013 by members of the Smart Payment Association, a group that accounts for 85% of the market... More
Brightwire: Apple signs mobile payments deal with China UnionPay
“Apple is likely to incorporate a near field communication (NFC) payment function in the next generation iPhone and has reached an agreement with China UnionPay on a mobile payment service,” investment newswire Brightwire reports, citing “a source close to the matter”... More
OTP Bank launches mobile payments in Hungary
Hungary’s OTP Bank has launched a mobile wallet that allows consumers to pay in stores by scanning a QR code placed next to the cash register... More
nTrust pilots Bluetooth payments in Canada
Canadian payments and money transfer provider nTrust has begun piloting a new mobile payments service that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons placed in stores to make wireless purchases... More
Waitrose tests iBeacons
Upmarket UK supermarket chain Waitrose is working on a new app that will use Bluetooth LE beacons to welcome customers to its stores and push promotional messages to shoppers... More