Apple Pay “has attracted regulatory scrutiny” from the EU’s Competition Commission due to “several expressions of concern about the US tech giant’s mobile payment service,” Reuters reports... More
Mobile payments
Visa invests in US ultrasonic payments startup
Visa has made “a financial injection” in Lisnr, a US startup that is using ultrasonic data transmission as an alternative to NFC and QR codes for mobile payments... More
Tencent to let visitors to China add their payment cards to WeChat Pay
Tencent, the owner of Chinese mobile payments provider WeChat Pay, has announced that it is working with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and JCB to enable cardholders to connect their payment cards to WeChat Pay and then use the platform to make mobile payments when visiting China... More
Alipay lets visitors to China use its mobile payments platform
Tourists visiting China can now use a version of Alipay designed specifically for international travellers to make mobile payments during their trip, Alipay has announced... More
India’s bank-led UPI instant payments platform reports 1bn mobile transactions
“UPI has had the fastest acceptance rate not just among payment platforms but digital platforms of any kind,” Dilip Asbe, chief executive officer of the National Payments Corporation of India, has told Bloomberg... More
Apple CEO: Apple Pay transaction volumes have now overtaken PayPal
Apple Pay revenue and transactions have “more than doubled year-over-year with over 3bn transactions in the September quarter, exceeding PayPal’s number of transactions and growing four times as fast,” Apple CEO Tim Cook has revealed... More
Cambodia begins rollout of national mobile payments platform
The National Bank of Cambodia has begun the rollout of a national mobile payments platform based on real-time funds transfers, QR mobile payments and a single electronic clearing system... More
Uber moves into financial services with new Uber Money division
Uber announces deeper push into financial services with Uber Money — CNBC — “The company announced on Monday the formation of a new division called Uber Money to house its efforts, which include a digital wallet and upgraded debit and credit cards. The emphasis, at first, will be expanding Uber’s efforts to give its four million-plus drivers and couriers around the world access to a mobile bank account so they can get paid after each ride. Uber could one day offer a bank account to consumers on its platform, according to Uber Money head Peter Hazlehurst.”
eMarketer identifies top countries for mobile payments adoption
China remains the country with by far the highest mobile payments adoption rate, with 81.1% of smartphone owners making use of the technology, eMarketer reports... More
Ahold Delhaize brings mobile self-checkout to US supermarkets
Shoppers at 30 US supermarkets operated by Netherlands-based retail giant Ahold Delhaize will be able to use their mobile phone to scan items as they shop and then self-checkout and pay by the end of this year... More
Report: EU antitrust investigators are examining Apple Pay
Apple Pay “has caught the eye of EU antitrust investigators, who have asked payment companies for feedback on the service,” regulatory risk specialist MLex reports... More
Samsung begins global rollout of mobile POS app that lets merchants accept payments on standard Android phones
Samsung’s NFC phone-based contactless payments acceptance service is now live in Canada and is to be introduced globally “starting in 2020”, the company has announced... More
Ohio transportation providers roll out multi-operator regional mobile ticketing service
Public transportation operators from across the US state of Ohio have gone live with EZfare, a new service that lets passengers use a single mobile ticketing app to buy tickets and passes from any of the participating operators... More
EMT to pilot blockchain and face recognition ticketing in Madrid
Madrid public transportation operator EMT has announced plans to run two next-generation transportation payments pilots... More
Survey pinpoints roadblocks to US mobile payments adoption
A major investigation into US consumers’ attitudes to mobile payments has found that concerns over how well they would be protected against loss should an issue arise is now the major barrier to widespread adoption of the technology... More
Raiffeisen Bank picks Antelop for NFC payments and strong customer authentication
PARTNER NEWS: Raiffeisen Bank has launched an Android NFC mobile payments service in Romania and the Czech Republic that uses Antelop Solutions’ digital payments and tokenization platform... More
Samsung Pay adds digital cash card and money transfers
Samsung Pay users in the US are now able to send international money transfers from within the mobile payments app — and use a new Samsung Pay Cash account to make payments in stores and online “right from the Samsung Pay app”... More
Zhengzhou Metro rolls out face recognition ticketing
Face-scanning metro check-in and payment launched in central China — Xinhua — “Zhengzhou Metro in central China’s Henan Province has ushered in the face-scanning era, as a new check-in and payment system based on facial recognition was launched on Friday… It is the first face-scanning metro check-in and payment system in the country launched along a full metro line, providing passengers with a better experience of quick pass access and automatic ticket buying.”
UnionPay reports 200m mobile payments users
There are now more than 200 million users of the UnionPay mobile payments app, the China-based payments network reports, and more than 3m merchants outside mainland China now accept UnionPay mobile payments... More
China to move to common QR payments standard
In depth: The fight for dominance in China’s mobile payment market — Caixin Global — “Under the plan, by the end of 2021 all merchants will be able to use one universal barcode to facilitate transactions through different payment service providers, including banks, Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay. Currently, payment providers issue different barcodes that can be used only on their own services.”