El Salvador has become the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, allowing citizens to use the cryptocurrency to make payments for goods and services as well as pay their tax bills and receive remittances from abroad... More
PayPal expands its international money transfer service Xoom to 32 markets across Europe — Xoom — “Today, PayPal launched Xoom — its international money transfer service — in 32 markets across Europe. People in these markets can now use Xoom to quickly send money, pay bills or top up phones to more than 130 markets internationally.”
Samsung Pay starts overseas remittance service in 17 countries — Pulse — “Samsung Pay users can now wire money [internationally] through their mobile phones and save in fees compared to sending money overseas via a conventional remittance route… The beta service will be available in 17 countries including the United States, China, and Japan. The company plans to gradually expand the service to other countries as well as add more partners.”
Banking services now more accessible with Shoprite Money — Shoprite — “This new service will enable customers to deposit, withdraw or send money as well as buy groceries at any of the till points in all Shoprite, Checkers, Checkers Hyper or Usave stores across South Africa… Shoprite Money is set to roll out in multiple countries in Africa over the next 12 to 18 months, which will hold additional benefits for customers including seamless and cost effective cross-border remittance.”
SoftBank, Sprint, Far EasTone and TBCASoft launch Blockchain consortium for telecom carriers — SoftBank — “SoftBank, Sprint and TBCASoft succeeded in demonstrating cross-carrier top-ups, mobile wallet roaming, international remittances and IoT payment on a cross-carrier payment platform system using TBCASoft’s blockchain technology.”
WorldRemit adds Android Pay as secure option for migrant remittances — Reuters — “Cross-border money transfer service WorldRemit is enabling its immigrant customer base to send money home using Android Pay, making it the first international remittance firm to run on the Google payments system.”
PARTNER NEWS: Mahindra Comviva has won an Aegis Graham Bell award for TerraPay, an international payment network that offers wholesale remittance services to mobile wallet providers... More
Users of Vodafone’s M-Pesa and MTN Group’s MTN Mobile Money services in east Africa will soon be able to transfer money to each other following an agreement between the region’s two biggest mobile network operators... More
Money transfer service provider MoneyGram has partnered with PicomoPay to enable US consumers to send funds to any of MoneyGram’s 336,000 agents around the world from the social payments provider’s Facebook application... More
Worldwide mobile payment transaction values will reach US$235.4bn in 2013, a 44% increase on 2012’s $163.1bn, according to a new forecast from Gartner — but NFC transactions will account for a smaller than expected proportion of that total and the overall market value has also been reduced... More
Chennai, India-based technology provider Yeldi Softcom has launched Ara eTap, an NFC sticker-based mobile payments service... More
The village of Rhiwbina, where the 11,000 locals have been without access to a cash machine for the last two years, has been picked as the demo site for O2’s new mobile wallet service, which supports mobile remittances, price comparisons, offers and mobile commerce today and is due to include NFC “in time”. More
Global mobile payment transaction values are set to grow by 42% a year, say the analysts, but the market will be fragmented over the next two years and NFC payments won’t hit the mass market until 2015. More
The tiny pacific island nation has become one of the first countries in the world to get a commercial NFC service with the launch of ‘Beep and Go’, a service introduced by local carrier Digicel that works in conjunction with NFC phones and stickers as well as the carrier’s existing Mobile Money remittance service and Verifone’s mWallet technology. More
The Russian bank and mobile network operator have created a new payments system called RuRu that will begin with mobile and ecommerce, P2P transfers and mobile remittances. NFC services will follow “in the near future.” More
More than 700 million people in emerging markets around the world will be using mobile money services in 2015, new research from Berg Insight suggests, as the market grows 40% a year from 2010’s 133m users... More
