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.”
Swiss bank Cornèr Banca has launched a biometric payment card that lets customers make contactless payments without being restricted to the usual CHF40 (US$40) contactless transaction limit... More
Ibotta Holiday Shopping and Mobile Payments Study — Ibotta — “Of the 61% of survey respondents who have used their phones to make an in-store purchase, 63% are motivated by payment methods that offer rewards, rebates and cash back, while 55% would be inclined to adopt mobile payments if the solutions saved them money… More than half (52%) of these shoppers say they feel overwhelmed by the large number of mobile payments and rewards programmes.”
Wallet app to be discontinued — ABN Amro — “Why will the Wallet app be discontinued? As it stands, the Wallet app is being used by less than 5% of our clients with an Android smartphone. That’s why we’re discontinuing the app.”
Food giant Nestlé is testing face recognition payments at Nestlé Market, a concept supermarket in Barcelona, Spain, that stocks the company’s established brands as well as the latest additions to its range... More
Fifteen thousand fans have now made use of the NFC-based mobile ticketing system which went live at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane, Australia, in May 2019, venue management company ASM Global has revealed... More
Apple Pay “has attracted regulatory scrutiny” from the EU’s Competition Commission due to “several expressions of concern about the US tech giant’s mobile payment service,” Reuters reports... More
UK-based DressCode has begun offering a range of tailored men’s shirts that include a contactless payments module incorporated into the sleeve cuff... More
Visa has made “a financial injection” in Lisnr, a US startup that is using ultrasonic data transmission as an alternative to NFC and QR codes for mobile payments... More
Tencent, the owner of Chinese mobile payments provider WeChat Pay, has announced that it is working with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and JCB to enable cardholders to connect their payment cards to WeChat Pay and then use the platform to make mobile payments when visiting China... More
Discover is to begin issuing contactless payment cards “for most” of its Discover It and Discover More cardmembers “who need cards reissued or replaced” this month and, from December, will start issuing contactless cards to new Discover cardholders... More
Tourists visiting China can now use a version of Alipay designed specifically for international travellers to make mobile payments during their trip, Alipay has announced... More
“My goal is to guide the NFC Forum in a slight pivot to increase focus on doing whatever is necessary to enable NFC technology to deliver a consistently positive user experience, however it is used,” Mike McCamon, the new executive director of the NFC Forum, has told NFC World... More
Pay with your face system coming to Canada, but not everyone is on board — Yahoo Finance — “Ryan Li, Foodymart’s executive manager, sees the technology as an opportunity to grow his company’s business by attracting new customers, as well as cutting down on checkout times. Li also said between 50% and 60% of Foodymart customers have lived in China, and he expects most of them have previously interacted with a facial recognition payment system.”
The National Bank of Cambodia has begun the rollout of a national mobile payments platform based on real-time funds transfers, QR mobile payments and a single electronic clearing system... More
Mastercard to launch solution for smartphones to become contactless acceptance devices — The Hindu BusinessLine — “If your phone has NFC, then it can become a point-of-sale (POS) device. A customer can tap the contactless card on the phone,” said Vikas Saraogi, vice president of acceptance development at Mastercard, adding that it is likely to be launched in India in the first half of next year.”
A face recognition-based biometric payments system installed at 1,000 7-Eleven outlets in southern China last May has been adopted by 10% of the convenience store’s customers, the retailer has told Nikkei Asian Review... More
China remains the country with by far the highest mobile payments adoption rate, with 81.1% of smartphone owners making use of the technology, eMarketer reports... More
Three in ten US smartphone owners now use a mobile payments app to make payments in stores — and Apple Pay is now the most popular with 30.3 million users, according to new research by eMarketer... More