Standard Bank is supporting the mass rollout of contactless cards across Africa as the financial services group reports an accelerated increase in the use of tap and pay across the continent... More
Payments
Regional Transit Service integrates transit tickets into mobility-as-a-service app
Passengers using Regional Transit Service (RTS) buses in the US city of Rochester can now plan their journeys, get real-time updates, connect to third-party mobility services and make tap-and-ride fare payments from within a single mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) app... More
Pandemic spurs half of US shoppers to try mobile contactless payments
More than half (53%) of today’s shoppers have used a mobile contactless payment option for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a survey by USA-based Inmar Intelligence... More
Facebook digital currency researchers publish ultra high-speed payments paper
A digital transaction settlement system being developed by researchers working on Facebook’s Novi cryptocurrency digital wallet app could support up to 160,000 transactions per second, “about 7x the peak transaction rate of the Visa payments network”, according to a paper published by the research team... More
China to maintain central database of all digital currency transactions
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) will keep a database of all transactions made using the digital yuan, China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), according to China Daily... More
JR East to offer extra loyalty points to transit card users travelling off-peak
Commuters on JR East train services in the Tokyo metropolitan area who pay for their tickets using a commuter pass stored on their Suica transit card will receive additional JRE loyalty points for travelling outside peak times from March 2021... More
Saudi Arabia reports ‘phenomenal’ increase in NFC mobile payments
NFC mobile payments accounted for 25% of overall POS transaction volumes in Saudi Arabia in September, Saudi Payments reports... More
Nottingham begins rollout of multi-operator contactless ticketing system
Nottingham City Transport (NCT) has become the first transportation operator in the UK city to roll out Nottingham Contactless, a multi-operator ticketing system that lets passengers use open-loop debit and credit cards and NFC mobile phones to pay for fares across multiple transportation operators... More
Juniper: Payments from smart home devices will top US$164bn by 2025
The total global transaction value of purchases made using smart home devices is expected to rise from US$22bn this year to more than US$164bn in 2025, according to Juniper Research... More
Nottingham adds NFC top ups to Robin Hood transit card
Public transport users in Nottingham, UK, can now buy credit or an extension to their season ticket with their NFC mobile phone and then transfer it to their multi-operator Robin Hood transit card by simply tapping their card to their NFC device... More
EMVCo, Fido and W3C explain how their technologies can be combined to streamline ecommerce payments
Payment standards body EMVCo, the Fido Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have published a document that explains how their technical specifications can be used to enable more secure and convenient card-based ecommerce transactions... More
Brazil begins rollout of Pix national instant payments platform
Pix, Brazil’s instant payment scheme, has gone live in a “restricted operation phase” prior to full implementation later this month, the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) has revealed... More
Japanese café uses Apple’s new NFC App Clips to let customers order and pay with their mobile phone
Customers at the Kitasando Coffee shop in Tokyo can now tap an NFC tag with their iPhone to launch the company’s App Clip, place their order and then use Apple Pay to pay for their food and drink... More
Antelop lets banks provide their customers with a way to manage tokenized cards from within their mobile banking app
PARTNER NEWS: Antelop Solutions has launched a tokenized card management solution that makes it possible for banks to provide their customers with the ability to view, control, push, update and manage the card details that they have shared with all the different mobile wallet providers and ecommerce merchants they deal with — from within their mobile banking app... More
Google Pay drives user engagement with Go India travel game
Google Pay users in India can now earn rewards by taking part in a digital travel game and collecting ‘tickets’ for a virtual journey around the country every time they use the mobile payments service on either their Android or iOS device... More
European Central Bank launches public consultation on digital euro
The European Central Bank (ECB) has launched an online survey that enables consumers and industry experts to express their priorities, preferences and concerns about the issuance of a digital euro as a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and means of payment in the euro area... More
Nearly a quarter of US Starbucks orders are now made from its mobile app
Nearly one in four transactions at Starbucks outlets in the US are now being made using the company’s mobile app, the coffee chain reports. The company’s 2020 fiscal results show that the percentage of mobile orders made using the Starbucks app has increased over the year More
Huawei integrates digital yuan hardware wallets into Mate 40 NFC smartphone
Owners of Huawei’s Mate 40 in China will be able to make transactions in digital yuan from a central bank digital currency (CBDC) hardware wallet built into the soon-to-be-released smartphone... More
EMVCo explains how merchants and card issuers can use Fido authentication to streamline online payments
Payment standards body EMVCo has published a white paper explaining how merchants and card issuers can streamline ecommerce payments and reduce the risk of fraud by using Fido authentication data in EMV 3-D Secure (3DS) messages... More
Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes to install digital menu boards across USA and Canada
Customers at Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes fast food outlets will be able to order meals, earn loyalty rewards and make contactless payments at digital menu boards being rolled out to 10,000 redesigned drive-thru locations across the USA and Canada... More