Financial services provider Orix is to promote Ant Financial’s Alipay mobile payment platform in Japan and encourage more stores to accept the service... More
Platform
US brewery installs BLE beacons on beer taps
Drinkers of Schlafly Beer in St Louis, Missouri can now receive information about drink specials, tasting notes, new beer releases and customised campaigns on their smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons attached to the craft brewery’s beer taps. More
Alipay to expand to Europe this summer
Chinese mobile payments platform Alipay, which has 450 million active users, is to be made available in Europe this summer, enabling Chinese shoppers to make payments in stores, receive offers and view nearby shops and restaurants that accept the mobile payments service. More
Amazon expands its payments business
Amazon has launched the Amazon Payments Partner Program, a new service designed to enable ecommerce platform providers and developers to offer merchants Amazon Payments, which allows customers to log in and pay using their account with the online retail giant... More
MasterCard reports on tokenization in Europe
MasterCard is working on more than 60 projects involving its MDES tokenization platform in Europe, the payments network has revealed... More
Singapore carriers to use Gemalto NFC SIMs for transit ticketing rollout
PARTNER NEWS: Digital security giant Gemalto is supplying Singapore’s mobile network operators with UpTeq Multi-Tenant NFC SIMs for the rollout of a service enabling commuters to use a mobile version of their EZ-Link transit card to pay for public transportation and for purchases at some 30,000 local retail outlets... More
Consortium to develop NFC packaging across UK supply chain
The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) has formed a specialist consortium to create a UK manufacturing supply chain that will support the widespread adoption of NFC packaging. More
SK Telecom launches hands free mobile payments and rewards
More than 100,000 customers of SK Telecom in Korea have subscribed to T Pay, a hands free mobile payment and rewards service based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology that launched earlier this month. More
Google to launch Android Pay in the UK in the “next few months”
Google has announced that it is to launch its Android Pay mobile payment service in the UK within the “next few months.” The service will launch with support from MasterCard, Visa and eight UK financial institutions. Barclays, one of the UK’s “big four” banks and an NFC mobile payments pioneer, is a notable absence from the list. More
One in four Norwegians use P2P payments app Vipps
A quarter of Norway’s population is now using Vipps, a P2P mobile payment solution launched by financial services group DNB and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in May 2015... More
ICICI Bank launches HCE mobile payments in India
Customers of India’s ICICI Bank will soon be able to make host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payments at any contactless-enabled terminal using the bank’s Pockets app. The service, which makes use of tokenization, is currently available to the bank’s employees and is expected to go live for customers at the end of March 2016. More
Paytm aims to sign up 4m stores in India for mobile payments
Indian mobile payments platform Paytm plans to double its in-store merchant acceptance to four million locations this year, the company’s CEO has told Economic Times... More
Carta Worldwide renews partnership with NFC World
NFC World is pleased to welcome transaction technology provider Carta Worldwide as a partner for a second year. Carta is an award-winning leader in next-generation transaction processing and mobile payment technologies including host card emulation (HCE), cloud-based secure elements and tokenization. More
Visa Checkout lets users slide to pay
Shoppers can now complete online purchases through Visa Checkout by sliding a virtual image of their credit, debit or prepaid card across the screen of their smartphone... More
Proxama and Google bring the physical web to London buses
PARTNER NEWS: Commuters across London can now access real-time transport updates and contextually relevant advertising on their mobile phones through MyStop, a physical web service launched by mobile commerce provider Proxama with the support of Google and in partnership with out-of-home advertising provider Exterion Media. More
Fido Bank launches HCE mobile payments in Ukraine
Consumers across Ukraine can now make host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payments using The Pay, a new service launched by Fido Bank in partnership with mobile wallet platform provider PriNum... More
Ant Financial seeks US$3bn in funding
Alipay parent Ant Financial is planning to raise up to 20bn yuan (US$3.1bn) in its current funding round at a valuation of more than $50bn, according to The Wall Street Journal... More
PowaTag sold to investors
Mobile payments platform PowaTag has been sold to a consortium led by entrepreneur Ben White, administrator Deloitte has confirmed, following news that its parent company Powa Technologies went into administration last month... More
CU Wallet offers Mogl cashbacks
The 120 credit unions using the CU Wallet platform to support their mobile payment services can now offer customers up to 30% cashback on purchases at “thousands of merchants” through rewards program provider Mogl... More
MasterCard to include Daon technology in selfie pay service
MasterCard is to make use of mobile biometric technology provider Daon’s IdentityX Platform as one of the authentication technologies for MasterCard Identity Check, the ‘selfie pay’ service it is rolling out to the US, Canada and parts of Europe this year... More