Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Alipay parent Ant Financial have each invested RMB3bn (US$483m) into Koubei, a joint venture that will let consumers order and pay for local services in China using their smartphone, “with an initial focus on the food and beverage segment”... More
Spanish supermarket chain Bonpreu is to roll out a mobile payments service to 170 stores, using a platform developed by Dinube that combines proprietary tokenization algorithms, NFC and biometric fingerprint security... More
Forty bars and nightclubs across the Australian city of Adelaide have installed Bluetooth beacons to track visitor attendance and push offers to passers-by using a platform provided by startup Little Birdy... More
Mobile location and proximity services provider Gimbal has begun licensing its Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon firmware to enable almost any device with BLE to act as a beacon — including ATMs, jukeboxes, access points, vending machines and more... More
Facebook has extended its ‘buy’ button pilot to US retailers using the Shopify commerce platform... More
Event organiser Reed Exhibitions is using Poken’s conference technology platform at the IBTM America exhibition in Chicago to collect exhibitor information, let attendees check-in for meetings, and exchange and collect contact information and digital brochures using an NFC device... More
MasterCard is “absolutely ready” to switch on Apple Pay in the UK and Europe and is just waiting for the iPhone maker’s green light... More
Visual discovery app Pinterest is to let its users make payments through Apple Pay on its platform by clicking on Buy buttons that will be integrated into a retailer’s page, including those from Macy’s, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom... More
ID card provider HID Global will use its Seos technology platform, which supports both NFC and BLE functionality, to let citizens carry government IDs on smartphones and other mobile devices... More
Google has unveiled Project Brillo, a development platform for the Internet of Things that will connect devices through a communication layer called Weave which “provides seamless and secure communication between devices both locally and through the cloud,” Google explains... More
Visa has launched the Visa Digital Enablement Program (VDEP), a new service that builds on the company’s token technology and adds a “turn-key, toll-free commercial framework accessible to more than 14,500 Visa financial institution clients and technology partners around the world”... More
Google is to introduce a new NFC mobile payments platform called Android Pay with the release of Android M later this year, vice president of engineering Dave Burke has revealed during the Google I/O 2015 keynote. More
Netherlands-based DS Tags is at an advanced stage with “several top-tier airlines” in planning the delivery of DS Bagtag, a solution that incorporates an NFC- and Bluetooth-enabled electronic luggage label, a secure cloud-based travel document delivery service platform and a mobile app that lets the user check themselves and their luggage onto their flight before arriving at the airport... More
StreetSmart, an organisation that raises money for homeless charities by adding a voluntary £1 donation onto bills in participating restaurants, is enabling diners to make a mobile donation by scanning QR codes distributed on table cards in more than 600 locations across the UK... More
Denmark’s Danske Bank is to build support for mobile commerce platform PowaTag into its MobilePay app, allowing two million Danes to order and pay for goods with their smartphones via ‘virtual boutiques’ generated by PowaTag Codes placed within print, broadcast and out-of-home (OOH) advertising... More
Online authentication provider Sekur.me has made it possible for merchants to accept Apple Pay for online payments for the first time, via a Universal Buy Button that works with a wide range of platforms and gateways, browsers and on both Android and iOS devices... More
Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has launched a platform for brands and product manufacturers that will enable them to place “dotless visual codes” on product packaging so that consumers can scan to check a product’s authenticity and get information, discounts and recommendations based on their preferences... More
Supporters of Saracens rugby union club have been given prepaid contactless wristbands that let them pay for food and drink with a tap at the club’s Allianz Park stadium in north London, as well make payments outside the venue and travel on the city’s public transport network... More
O2, one of the three UK mobile network operators that formed the mobile commerce joint venture Weve three years ago, has bought out partners EE and Vodafone to operate the brand as a wholly-owned subsidiary — and has confirmed to NFC World that it has abandoned Weve’s mobile payment ambitions... More
Qualcomm Technologies is working with NXP to integrate NXP’s NFC and embedded secure element (eSE) solutions into reference designs for its Snapdragon 800, 600, 400 and 200 processor-based platforms, mobile chipsets which already lie at the heart of more than one billion devices... More