The pandemic may result in increased calls to defend the role of cash, moves towards more quickly introducing central bank digital currencies and a structural increase in the use of mobile, card and online payments, a Bank for International Settlements (BIS) research bulletin analysing the likely impact of Covid-19 says... More
Mobile payments
Mastercard: 29 countries have now agreed to raise their contactless payment limit
Mastercard is now working with 29 countries across Europe and central Asia to implement increases to their contactless payment transaction limit, the payments network says... More
Mastercard, Thales and Tappy explain how watch and wearable brands can add support for payments
KNOWLEDGE CENTRE: The opening session of the Wearable Payment Summit 2020, NFCW’s first online conference, is now available to watch free of charge in our Knowledge Centre... More
China promotes consumer spending with government mobile payment vouchers
The Chengyang District of the city of Qingdao has become the first in China to use a new WeChat service to issue government vouchers directly to residents’ mobile phones, in a bid to boost consumer spending as the Chinese economy begins to recover from Covid-19... More
Norwegian banks increase domestic contactless card transaction limit
Norway is increasing the transaction limit for BankAxept domestic contactless debit card payments from 400 kr (US$34.28) to 500 kr (US$42.84) “in order to minimise the number of physical touch points where infection can be transmitted”... More
Turkey to double contactless limit as transaction volumes soar
Contactless transaction limits are to more than double from 120 Turkish lira (US$18.29) to 250 lira ($38.11), Soner Canko, chair of the Turkish Interbank Card Center (BKM) has announced... More
UAE urges consumers to use online banking services
The Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) has issued a statement strongly encouraging banking customers “to take advantage of digital and online banking services as a measure to protect the health and safety for UAE residents.”... More
National Bank of Georgia recommends contactless and mobile payments
“Whenever possible, use cashless payments, contactless and mobile payments,” Georgia’s central bank has urged the country’s citizens... More
Barclays lets UK customers use its mobile banking app to make payments from accounts held at other banks
Barclays has become the first UK high street bank to leverage open banking APIs to enable its customers to use its mobile banking app to make payments from accounts they hold with other banks... More
Merchants in four European countries to pilot dongle-free contactless payments on Android NFC phones
Merchants in the UK, Germany, Bulgaria and Romania are to participate in the pilot of a new mobile POS (mPOS) service that enables contactless payments to be accepted on Android mobile devices “without the need for any additional hardware”... More
Dual NFC and QR mobile payments service launches in Pakistan
UnionPay, Huawei and National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) have launched a mobile payments service that lets owners of Huawei and Honor NFC phones use a single mobile wallet app to pay at any merchant equipped to accept either contactless or QR code payments... More
Alipay sets out plan for open financial services platform
Chinese mobile payments giant Alipay has announced a three-year plan to evolve its current offering into an open financial services and digital lifestyle platform — and has set a target of attracting 40m service providers by 2030... More
Samsung Pay goes live in Kazakhstan
Samsung Pay is now live in Kazakhstan, with the backing of nine local banks — Altyn Bank, Alfa Bank, ATF Bank, CenterCredit Bank, Eurasian Bank, ForteBank, Halyk Bank, Jýsan Bank and Sberbank... More
Amazon to sell its cashierless store technology to other retailers
Amazon is making the cashierless store technology it uses in its Amazon Go stores available to other retailers under a new Just Walk Out brand name... More
NFCW launches online conference and exhibition platform
KNOWLEDGE CENTRE: The NFCW team has developed a new online conference and exhibition platform that lets readers quickly and easily share information on the innovative projects, products and services they are working on with our global audience of senior executives and technical specialists — and we’re opening early access today with some very special charter rates for sponsors and exhibitors... More
Bahamas expands digital currency pilot
The Central Bank of The Bahamas has extended its central bank digital currency pilot to the island of Abaco and revealed that the new Sand Dollar currency will include support for offline functionality... More
TfL signs £2m payments promotion deal with Google Pay
Google has agreed to pay Transport for London (TfL) £2m (US$2.56m) for the right to place Google Pay branding on all of London Underground’s 5,686 tap in/out card readers for a year... More
Santa Clara University rolls out iPhone NFC student IDs
Students, faculty and staff at Santa Clara University in the US can now add their Access student ID card to Apple Wallet and use their iPhone and Apple Watch to access buildings, attend athletic events, purchase meals and check out books from the library, the Silicon Valley-based university has announced... More
Tesco opens cashless convenience store
UK-based supermarket giant Tesco is testing a cashless-only payments service at its High Holborn store in central London... More
PayPal fixes Google Pay integration exploit
PayPal says it has now fixed an issue with its Google Pay integration that saw multiple users reporting that unauthorized transactions were appearing in their PayPal history, ZDNet reports... More