Vodafone Italia is working with high-end Italian food market chain Eataly on a pilot project that lets 2,500 staff tap their NFC phone or scan a QR code on a smart poster to order and pay for groceries that are then delivered to their home or office... More
Pilot
Pepsi tests NFC for shopper marketing
Pepsi has tested a new NFC shopper marketing solution developed by logistics optimisation solutions provider Rehrig Pacific that uses NFC chips and QR codes on display trays to “increase the opportunity for consumer interaction, at the point of sale, without increased merchandising or delivery costs”... More
Starbucks now processes six million mobile payments a week
Coffee chain giant Starbucks now has 12 million active users of its mobile app in the US and Canada alone... More
London Underground to accept NFC payments
Users of mobile network operator EE’s Cash on Tap NFC payments service will be able to use their mobile phone to pay for travel on the London Underground, Docklands Light Railway and London Overground services from 16 September, when Transport for London (TfL) introduces the ability for passengers to pay for travel using contactless cards... More
Waitrose showcases QR payments
Upmarket UK supermarket chain Waitrose has shown off a proof-of-concept mobile shopping service, based on Ensygnia’s Onescan technology, that “allows customers to complete a payment in-store using a mobile phone app, completing a purchase direct from any iPad screen in the store, without the need to head to the till point”... More
Westpac trials HCE mobile payments in New Zealand
Westpac has begun a host card emulation (HCE) pilot in New Zealand, enabling customers’ credit and debit card details to be securely stored in the cloud and then used at the point of sale to make mobile payments on their Android NFC device... More
Facebook tests buy button
Facebook is testing a ‘buy’ button which allows consumers to purchase products through the social media platform... More
Alpha Bank launches NFC in Greece
Greece’s Alpha Bank has officially launched its Tap n Pay NFC mobile payment service... More
Japan Airlines combines beacons and smartwatches to improve customer service at airports
Japan Airlines staff at Tokyo’s Haneda airport are being provided with smartwatches that work in conjunction with Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, to give management a way to assign staff more efficiently and respond more swiftly to customer requests. More
PayPal pays next day
PayPal is piloting Next-Day Settlement (NDS), a new service that cuts the time taken for transfers between a merchant’s PayPal account and their bank account from the usual three or four days to 24 hours... More
UK city to run NFC, QR and BLE shopper marketing pilot
Proximity commerce specialist Proxama has partnered with the Association of Town and City Management (ATCM) and Norwich Business Improvement District (BID) to run a shopper marketing pilot in the UK city of Norwich... More
Hungarian Mobile Wallet Association reports NFC pilot results
Participants in The Hungarian Mobile Wallet Association’s MobilTarca NFC pilot made 41,000 payments valued at more than 120 million HUF (US$525,000) during the first 12 months of the trial, the association has revealed... More
Orange’s NFC transit ticketing goes live in Valencia
Mobile network operator Orange has formally launched its NFC transit ticketing service in the Spanish city of Valencia... More
Nigerian farmers use NFC to access seed and fertilizer subsidies
“In some parts of the developed world, NFC can sometimes be a solution looking for a problem but we’ve got plenty of problems here in Africa and it is an ideal solution for quite a few of them,” says mobile money expert Susie Lonie. More
Walgreens tests augmented reality offers in stores
US pharmacy chain Walgreens is piloting a shopper marketing platform that uses Google’s Project Tango 3D augmented reality technology to let shoppers locate a particular product, get directions to the correct aisle and earn rewards as they shop... More
Carrefour and Nisa track shoppers via Bluetooth beacons in trolleys and baskets
Supermarket giant Carrefour and convenience store group Nisa are piloting a new technology that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons attached to trolleys and baskets to track a shopper’s journey around the store... More
Air France to test NFC
Air France is to run an NFC pilot at airports in Paris and Toulouse from 2 July, enabling a selected group of customers to download their boarding pass to their NFC phone... More
McDonald’s tests mobile ordering and payments in the US
McDonald’s is testing a service that lets customers order their meal before they arrive at a restaurant and then collect it and pay by scanning a QR code... More
Washington Metro to test NFC payments in 2015
Washington Metro (WMATA) is preparing to pilot NFC payments, allowing passengers to pay for their journey with an NFC smartphone or a contactless bank or ID card... More
SimplyTapp offers DIY HCE
SimplyTapp, the US startup that worked with Google to add support for host card emulation (HCE) to Android, is now offering a self-service platform for card issuers and other mobile app developers looking to pilot HCE solutions... More