Paii, the mobile payments joint venture created by Danish mobile network operators TDC, Telenor, Telia and 3, has been sold to Swipp, a mobile payments service owned by a consortium of more than 60 banks, after Paii came to the conclusion that the telcos are not as well placed as banks to take the platform forward... More
A new service that lets NFC phone users enter their PIN on their mobile device to confirm a high value transaction is making it possible for UK consumers to make contactless payments valued at more than the current £20 (US$32) transaction limit for the first time... More
Latvian startup Walmoo has launched a mobile loyalty platform that uses standard NFC phones or tablets to provide customers with the ability to redeem coupons, discounts and offers... More
China UnionPay (CUP) is planning to introduce “Android Pay”, an NFC-based mobile payments service, in the third quarter of 2015, Yicai reports... More
Payments startup Drop has launched a mobile payments and loyalty solution that uses Bluetooth beacons to let shoppers order and pay from up to 200 feet away before picking up their purchase and leaving without having to wait in line at the point of sale... More
Japanese startup TenTen Technologies is to offer retailers USB-based Bluetooth beacons that plug into POS terminals and vending machines so that rewards can be issued automatically to users of the company’s mobile app when they make a purchase... More
Oberthur Technologies (OT) has teamed up with NFC mPOS services provider Mobeewave for Flying mPOS, a solution that will enable NFC devices equipped with Oberthur’s Pearl embedded secure element to be used as a mobile POS terminal — without the need for a separate dongle or other add-on... More
A number of cafes in Helsinki, Finland, are to begin testing a payments service developed by Uniqul that uses the geometric proportions of a customer’s face to verify their identity, Yle reports... More
Westpac New Zealand is to offer customers contactless stickers they can attach to the back of their mobile phone to make NFC payments at more than 15,000 contactless POS terminals across the country... More
EcoCash, Africa’s second largest mobile money provider with 3.7m users, is to offer customers in Zimbawe a MasterCard debit card linked to their EcoCash wallet... More
US carrier mobile payments venture Softcard has unveiled Tappy, a mascot designed by the company behind The Muppets that will be used initially in an online advertising blitz reported to be valued at US$1.5m. More
McDonald’s sees accepting NFC mobile payments as part of its on-going customer service improvement remit, the fast food giant’s Anja Carroll has told NFC World+... More
The Canadian government is preparing to give merchants the ability to refuse to accept a particular NFC payment service if it attracts higher than usual fees — should that situation ever arise in the future, a document obtained by the WSJ reveals... More
US fast food chain Dairy Queen has expanded pilot testing of its myDQ mobile loyalty, offers and payments service to more than sixty locations in the states of Colorado and Nebraska ahead of a planned rollout of the solution to all its 4,500 US franchise locations... More
Just 4% of independent business owners in the US are aware they have a contactless POS terminal and 14% are not sure, Newtek Business Services’ latest SBA Market Sentiment Survey has revealed — and only 7% say they plan to upgrade so they can make contactless NFC payments like Apple Pay available to their customers, while 93% say they have no plans to do so... More
Visa Europe has partnered with payment and transaction services provider Worldline to pilot NFC mobile payments using host card emulation (HCE) with four French banks in the first quarter of 2015... More
Bitcoin payment gateway BitPay is to roll out a point-of-sale app to “every mobile market worldwide” that makes it possible for merchants to process Bitcoin payments via NFC... More
Chase Paymentech and Vantiv, two of the largest payment processors in the US, have signed up to distribute the former head of Google Wallet’s new Poynt POS terminal to their merchant bases... More
MCX member Target has integrated Apple Pay into its mobile app but is not accepting payments via Apple Pay in its stores, the retailer has told NFC World+... More
Starbucks accounted for more than 90% of all mobile transactions in the US last year, the coffee chain’s CEO Howard Schultz has revealed during a fourth quarter earnings call in which he also set out plans to continue to dominate the mobile payments space. More