Overwhelming response on first day of RM30 e-Tunai initiative — The Star — “The claims for the e-Tunai Rakyat initiative kicked off today with Touch ‘n Go eWallet, Boost and GrabPay selected to be the service providers for the project… Malaysians aged 18 and above and who earn less than RM100,000 (US$24,533) annually will be eligible to receive RM30 (US$7.36) each through any of the participating e-wallets.”
Visa has unveiled Tap to Phone, a new software-only solution that enables merchants to accept contactless payments on Android NFC mobile phones, without the need for any additional hardware... More
Biometric cards equipped with built-in fingerprint sensors have the potential to make payments both safer and easier, but the technology is still new and there are critical elements that need to be put in place to ensure widespread adoption, NXP explains in a white paper now available to download from the NFCW Knowledge Centre... More
Mutual Trust Bank has announced it is to be the first bank in Bangladesh to go live with Bangla QR, an interoperable QR payments system backed by the country’s central bank... More
Fifteen US universities have signed up to integrate their student ID cards with Google Pay, enabling staff and students to make payments and access facilities and residence halls with their Android NFC phone... More
WeChat Pay operator Tencent is working with China UnionPay on the adoption of a common QR code that will allow merchants to use the same code to accept payments from both companies’ mobile payment services, Caixin Global reports... More
PARTNER NEWS: Japanese carrier NTT Docomo is using NXP’s new NFC, ultra wideband (UWB) and secure element chipset in a concept POS device that lets consumers make secure payments “while keeping your smartphone in your pocket or bag”... More
Customers of Deutsche Bank in Spain can now apply for a card that replaces the traditional, printed CVV number with a small screen integrated into the back of the card that displays a new CVV every four hours... More
Contactless point of sale installed base to exceed 161m by 2024 — Juniper Research — “New data from Juniper Research forecasts that the installed base of contactless-enabled POS (Point of Sale) devices will exceed 161m by 2024; growing from 78m in 2019. Contactless POS devices will then be 94% of all POS devices in use.”
Retailers don’t like paying the fees for your Apple Card — Bloomberg — “The card, marketed by Apple and backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc, is designated ‘elite’, which allows it to levy significantly higher interchange fees on each swipe or tap… The cards have long irked retailers. They have no choice but to pay the higher fees for elite plastic if they want to accept any of a network’s credit cards.”
‘Alexa, send flowers’: Order a bouquet in time for Christmas using only your voice — Interflora — “Global flower delivery company Interflora has become the first UK retail brand to launch a complete end-to-end ‘V-commerce’ service, with just one simple voice-based transaction making it possible to send flowers via Alexa and check out with Amazon Pay, all without lifting a finger.”
Toy retailer PicWicToys, which took over the French stores of Toys ’R’ Us last year, has introduced a mobile self-checkout solution designed to ease the strain of shopping with children, by letting customers avoid waiting in a queue to check out and pay for their purchases... More
Sheep Inc: The world’s first carbon-negative fashion brand — Evening Standard — “Each sweater comes with an NFC tag on the hem, marked with a unique serial number. When scanned with a smartphone, the full details of the garment’s manufacturing journey and carbon-footprint are unlocked… In amongst all the information and insights on material origins, water usage and production techniques that appear when you scan the tag, is also the name of the sheep who provided the wool for your sweater.”
Canadians rapidly adopting new payments channels — Payments Canada — “Contactless payments grew 30% year over year from 2017-2018 with a total of 4.1bn contactless payments (card and mobile) worth CA$129.9bn (US$98.58bn) at the point of sale (POS)… Mobile devices were used by nearly 35% of Canadians for contactless payments on a regular basis in 2018.”
Grab launches Asia’s first numberless card — Grab — “The physical version of the card is completely numberless, front and back, thus averting the prospect of theft of personal and financial information… The digital GrabPay Card is available in Singapore starting today… The digital GrabPay Card will be launched in the Philippines in Q1 2020, with other Southeast Asian countries to follow in the first half of next year.”
Biometrics to secure $2.5tn in mobile payments by 2024 — Juniper Research — “Biometric authentication will be used to secure US$2.5tn worth of mobile payment transactions by 2024, an increase of almost 1,000% on the US$228bn expected to be transacted through the method by the end of 2019.”
Octopus stored value limit increases to HK$3,000 to meet consumers’ greater spending needs — Octopus — “Any customer who possesses a Smart Octopus issued before 1 October 2019 or an Octopus product issued before 1 December 2019 can upgrade the stored value limit from HK$1,000 (US$127.75) to HK$3,000 (US$383.26) via Octopus App or at any Octopus Service Point. Once the stored value limit has been upgraded, customers can also make payment of up to HK$3,000 for each transaction starting from 1 December at over 3,200 retail outlets.”
The volume of transactions made using wearable devices has seen an eightfold increase in Europe over the past 12 months, Mastercard reports, while Australia tops the list of countries where most wearable payments are now being made.... More
Netherlands-based supermarket giant Ahold Delhaize has opened Lunchbox, a low-cost cashierless store that lets consumers “shop a small format store in seconds by scanning in, shopping and walking out”... More
China mobile payments maintain rapid growth in Q3 — Xinhua — “Banks in the country processed 27.27bn mobile payment transactions in the period, up 61.05% year on year, said the People’s Bank of China in a report. The value of these transactions increased by 31.52% from the same period of last year to 86.11tn yuan (about US$12.2tn). Meanwhile, online payment transactions by the non-banking institutions were valued at 63.99tn yuan in Q3, up 23.04% year on year.”
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