Coca Cola is planning to launch a loyalty programme at select vending machines this spring that would let customers accumulate points to earn a free drink... More
Retail
UK food chain opens cash-free stores
Customers of UK healthy eating chain Tossed will only be able to pay for their orders using a chip card, contactless card or an NFC mobile payment app such as Apple Pay at the two new food outlets the company is opening in London this week. More
Paytm aims to sign up 4m stores in India for mobile payments
Indian mobile payments platform Paytm plans to double its in-store merchant acceptance to four million locations this year, the company’s CEO has told Economic Times... More
Nielsen reports on mobile wallet market in India
Paytm is the most popular mobile payment app among Android smartphone owners in urban India, research from Nielsen reveals, with 39% of users with an internet connection making use of the service for an average duration of 70 minutes a month. More
Visa Checkout lets users slide to pay
Shoppers can now complete online purchases through Visa Checkout by sliding a virtual image of their credit, debit or prepaid card across the screen of their smartphone... More
Samsung Pay hands out US$30 gift cards to S7 users
US consumers who make their first purchase using Samsung Pay on a Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge device this month are being offered a gift card worth US$30 from one of five selected Samsung Pay merchants — Best Buy, eBay, Whole Foods, Nike or Regal Cinema. More
Square “betting big on NFC”
Square has received more than 350,000 pre-orders for its contactless chip reader, CEO Jack Dorsey revealed during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call... More
Study examines attitudes to contactless payments in the UK, Germany and Spain
More than 90% of British, German and Spanish business leaders interviewed for a survey of attitudes to contactless technology have already invested in contactless projects and expect that 10% of all transactions will be contactless within the next three years, a white paper now available to download from the NFC World+ Knowledge Centre reveals. More
Proxama and Google bring the physical web to London buses
PARTNER NEWS: Commuters across London can now access real-time transport updates and contextually relevant advertising on their mobile phones through MyStop, a physical web service launched by mobile commerce provider Proxama with the support of Google and in partnership with out-of-home advertising provider Exterion Media. More
Fido Bank launches HCE mobile payments in Ukraine
Consumers across Ukraine can now make host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payments using The Pay, a new service launched by Fido Bank in partnership with mobile wallet platform provider PriNum... More
More than 100m people will make an NFC mobile payment in 2016
More than 100m people around the world will use an NFC handset to make a purchase this year, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics, and the value of transactions conducted via NFC handsets will grow from US$30bn in 2016 to US$240bn in 2021. More
Square drops contactless for Australia launch
Mobile POS provider Square has launched in Australia, enabling retailers across the country to accept credit and debit card payments using their mobile phones... More
mBank cancels NFC SIM deals in favour of HCE and bank-backed Blik mobile payments
Poland’s mBank has withdrawn the facility for customers to add mobile versions of their debit cards to the NFC payments services offered by mobile network operators T-Mobile and Orange... More
CU Wallet offers Mogl cashbacks
The 120 credit unions using the CU Wallet platform to support their mobile payment services can now offer customers up to 30% cashback on purchases at “thousands of merchants” through rewards program provider Mogl... More
Amex patent turns reward points into virtual currency
American Express is exploring a system that would let its customers use reward points for purchases in third-party digital wallets, according to a newly published patent application... More
Canada’s TD Bank Group adds HCE to mobile payment service
Canada’s TD Bank Group has added support for host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payments to the TD Mobile Payment application that it launched in May 2014. The service is the first in Canada to make use of Visa’s tokenization technology, the bank says. More
Apple Pay tops US merchant mobile wallet requests
Nearly half of US point of sale merchants (44%) are using or have requested information about mobile wallet solutions and 67% of those wanted Apple Pay, an investor note by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reported by Barron’s reveals... More
Google reports on US Android Pay adoption
Android Pay has averaged 1.5m new registrations each month in the US since the mobile payment service’s launch in September 2015, Google has revealed... More
Polish bank brings HCE payments to Windows 10 devices
Customers of Poland’s Bank Pekao with a Windows 10 Mobile device can now use the bank’s PeoPay host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payment service to make transactions at any contactless terminal... More
Google pilots hands-free payments in San Francisco
Shoppers in San Francisco’s South Bay area are being invited to take part in a pilot test of Hands Free, a payment service developed by Google that uses a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi and location services to let consumers make in-store payments without taking their mobile phone out of their pocket. More