Customers at Foodcellar Market grocery stores in New York City in the US can now scan the items they wish to purchase with their smartphone and then pay for them from their mobile device before leaving the store... More
QR Codes
Indian banks begin testing digital rupee for contactless in-store payments
India’s ICICI, IDFC First and Kotak Mahindra banks have begun enabling selected merchants to accept contactless in-store payments made using the retail version of the prototype digital rupee as part of the first phase of the Reserve Bank of India’s retail central bank digital currency pilot... More
Qatar National Bank rolls out contactless biometric payments
Customers of Qatar National Bank (QNB) can now authenticate contactless payments for purchases at merchants in Qatar using their face and without needing to use a physical payment card or smartphone... More
Bangladesh central bank pilots interoperable national QR code payments system
The Central Bank of Bangladesh is trialling an interoperable payments system that will enable customers of more than 15 major banks and payment service providers to pay for their purchases by scanning a standardized QR code at a participating merchant’s point of sale with their smartphone... More
SEPTA pilots mobile ticketing in Philadelphia and reveals plans to roll out open loop contactless fare payments
Passengers travelling on bus, trolley and rapid transit lines in the US city of Philadelphia can now purchase, store and activate QR code tickets for up to five people travelling the same route on their Apple or Android smartphone... More
Maryland tests digital ID cards and driving licences for Android NFC smartphone users
Android users in Maryland are the first in the US to be able to create and store digital versions of their state identity card and driving licence in Google Wallet on their NFC smartphone and use it to verify their identity at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security checkpoints at selected airports... More
BMW adds in-car parking payments in Germany and Austria
BMW drivers in Germany and Austria can now find parking spaces and pay for parking from their car using its in-vehicle infotainment system or the My BMW app... More
Thailand Post uses QR codes to deliver secure digital addresses for letters and parcels
Thai national postal service Thailand Post is to launch a Digital Post ID service that will enable customers to address a letter or parcel with a QR code label rather than revealing the sender and recipient’s personal details by writing or printing them on the envelope or packaging... More
Increasing adoption of NFC, QR codes and biometrics drives growth across cardless ATM market
The global cardless ATM market will have increased in value by US$2.11bn by 2026, an expansion driven by the growing adoption of NFC- and QR code-enabled smartphones and the emergence of biometric ATM technology, according to a Technavio forecast... More
Visa to pilot biometric payments and instant digital prepaid card issuance at World Cup in Qatar
Football fans attending the FIFA World Cup in Qatar will be able to authenticate payments for purchases at three coffee outlets with their face, using biometric technology being piloted by Visa and Qatar National Bank... More
Korean MNOs let users add digital national ID card to mobile verification app
Residents of South Korea can now create, store and use a digital version of their national identity card on their mobile device using the Pass verification app that they can then use to prove their age when purchasing age-restricted goods and to verify their identity when signing contracts and other legal documents... More
Brazil begins rollout of contactless mobile identity cards
Residents of six Brazilian states and the country’s Federal District can now generate a digital national identity card that they can store on their Apple or Android smartphone and use to verify their ID for multiple uses including accessing public services and contactless cross-border travel to other South American countries within the Mercosur region... More
Austria begins rollout of digital IDs for contactless identity checking
The Austrian government is enabling residents to create and store a digital version of their driving licence on their Apple or Android smartphone as a first step towards rolling out “as many digital ID cards and documents on mobile phones as possible”... More
France extends public pilot of digital health insurance card
Residents of eight French departments will soon be able to verify their identity when accessing healthcare services and claim reimbursement for medical fees by scanning a digital version of their Carte Vitale health insurance card stored on their smartphone with an NFC reader or presenting a QR code to service providers... More
Consortium proposes European Digital Identity Wallet payments pilot
A consortium of government agencies, financial institutions, payments networks and technology providers from Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia and Norway is proposing to launch a large-scale payments pilot to explore how the European Digital Identity Wallet being developed by the European Commission would support cross-border transactions... More
Greece reports on uptake of digital ID cards and driving licences
More than 710,000 Greek citizens have used the Greek government’s Gov.gr Wallet app to create and store a digital version of their national identity card on their smartphone and more than 563,000 have used it to generate a digital version of their driving licence since the service went live last month... More
Mastercard reports on growth in consumer adoption of emerging payments technologies
Nearly nine in ten consumers worldwide have made digital payments using digital wallets, contactless, QR codes, buy now pay later, money transfer apps, cryptocurrencies, biometrics and other digital payment technologies (85%) and more than six in ten say they have increased their usage of at least one digital payment method (61%) in the last 12 months, according to a Mastercard survey... More
America First Credit Union lets customers authenticate banking transactions with digital driving licence
Customers of America First Credit Union (AFCU) in the US states of Utah and Arizona can now use either state’s mobile driving licence (mDL) to securely verify their identity when accessing their financial information and conducting banking transactions at any of the credit union’s 121 branch locations... More
US Department of Agriculture to trial NFC and QR mobile payments for contactless state benefits
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is to run a series of pilot schemes to test the use of mobile payments technology to enable citizens entitled to financial support under its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to receive benefits and make NFC or QR code payments for eligible purchases on their mobile device... More
Hong Kong Fire Services Department to launch contactless triage cards to improve emergency response management
Hong Kong’s Fire Services Department is to introduce contactless triage or casualty classification cards containing an NFC chip and a QR code that enable rescue workers to communicate accurate real-time information about the injuries of individuals involved in large-scale accidents to other frontline staff, public hospitals and dispatch centres... More