Homeless people in the Dutch cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam have been testing a jacket equipped with a contactless terminal to enable passersby to tap their contactless cards and make a €1 (US$1.04) donation, which can then be redeemed through official homeless shelters... More
Customers at Henry’s Café Bar in London’s Piccadilly have been testing a prototype self-serve beer pump that allows them to order drinks on a touchscreen and complete payment by tapping their contactless card or NFC device at the base of the pump, before placing their glass under the dispenser for the drink... More
Devices such as smartwatches could be powered by little more than the heat of the wearer’s body, if the promise of a California-based startup is delivered, EE Times reports... More
Metro Bank in the UK has successfully trialled a blockchain retail payment system, allowing consumers to make purchases from merchants equipped with contactless terminals, with merchant and consumer balances updated in real time... More
Drivers in the UK may soon be able to store their driver’s license in Apple’s Passbook wallet, according to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA)... More
Customers of Nationwide Building Society in the UK may soon be able to access their mobile banking accounts using behavioural biometrics that recognise how they interact with their smartphone, from the way they hold their device to how they type... More
Shoppers at Adobe’s prototype “store of the future” in Las Vegas are being given RFID chip-enabled shopping bags that allow them to purchase items simply by putting the bags on a checkout counter... More
PARTNER NEWS: A new reference design for wearables from processor designer ARM includes high-performance NFC technology from AMS that enables small-footprint devices with tiny antennas to couple with NFC readers as easily and reliably as a contactless card... More
Visa is extending its Visa Token Service platform to auto manufacturers to enable in-vehicle payment experiences through Visa Checkout. The company has partnered with Honda and car parking solutions provider ParkWhiz to demonstrate fuel and parking proof-of-concept solutions at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. More
Swiss luxury watchmaker Mondaine is to add NFC payment capability to a variety of its watches, starting with its Mondaine Helvetica No1 smartwatch, that will let wearers make payments with a tap of their wrist at any contactless enabled terminal. More
Consumers using Cash by Optus — the prepaid NFC SIM-based payments service launched by Australian mobile network operator Optus in November 2014 — can now make payments using a contactless wristband or a sticker attached to their mobile phone. More
PARTNER NEWS: NXP is to showcase NFC and the Internet of Things (IoT) in a world tour that includes stops in 86 cities. The Smarter World Tour “is a highly visible, 36 tons, 2 levels, fully mobile semi-truck trailer designed by Luigi Colani which turns into a large and spacious mobile tradeshow,” NXP says. More
Canadian NFC mobile wallet service Suretap and TSM provider EnStream have completed a proof of concept trial with public transport agency Société de transport de Montréal (STM) that enabled transit passengers to pay fares using their smartphone. More
PARTNER NEWS: AMS’s BoostedNFC technology has been included by STMicroelectronics in a new NFC board that will let developers quickly implement secure contactless technology in devices with tight space constraints, such as IoT nodes and wearables... More
Employees of UK-based payment processor Worldpay are taking part in a three week proof-of-concept trial to evaluate the use of finger vein technology (FVT) to authenticate payments at the point-of-sale without the need for a card. More
A team of NFC payments veterans has launched a campaign on Kickstarter to raise funds for an NFC ring that can be used to make payments at contactless POS terminals and across the Transport for London network. More
UK-based payment processor Worldpay is conducting trials of a facial biometric verification system for payments in stores, using a prototype device that includes an upward-facing camera embedded into a POS terminal... More
Electrical engineers at the University of California San Diego have demonstrated a new wireless communication technique that works by sending magnetic signals through the human body. More
MasterCard has approved a solution that enables payment credentials to be provisioned to wearable devices with a secure element and NFC antenna... More
Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Ma has demonstrated a prototype biometric verification service that could enable a payment to be authorized by simply capturing an image of a mobile phone user’s face. More