Singapore’s POSB bank has provided 6,000 primary school children with smartwatches equipped with fitness tracking and mobile payments capabilities in a bid to “teach students how to save and spend wisely by helping them track their savings and spending habits digitally.”... More
A select group of ABN Amro customers has begun piloting payments using NFC-enabled rings supplied by Kerv and smartwatches... More
PARTNER NEWS: NFC World partners Mahindra Comviva and Rambus are among the 13 companies that signed up to participate in Visa’s token service provider (TSP) platform earlier this month... More
KISA to unveil bio authentication for mobile banking in 2018 — Korea Herald — “Korea Internet & Security Agency is developing bio authentication for mobile banking to commercialize it by late 2018… The biometric authentication reads heart rates and electrocardiograms on a user’s smartwatch, which sends the information to his or her smartphone. The smartphone is then unlocked with the user’s fingerprint which enables the use of mobile banking.”
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Future Interfaces Group have developed a working concept that enables smartphones to interact with smart home appliances using electromagnetic emission sensing technology. More
Iran launches NFC payments — Financial Tribune — “The Central Bank of Iran is developing new mobile payment systems so people may use their smartphones or watches for making purchases, said the director of CBI’s IT Department.”
Nearly six in ten New Zealanders (59%) think mobile payments will be the next major payments technology to take off, followed by payments using wearables like smartwatches (47%) and biometrics such as facial recognition and fingerprints (42%), research released by Mastercard reveals. More
Samsung Pay is now available on the Gear S3 smartwatch in Korea and Samsung Pay Mini — the pared-down version of the mobile payment service — has also gone live in the country... More
Samsung Pay has expanded to four additional markets with official launches in Sweden and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and early access launches in Hong Kong and Switzerland. The service has also been made available on Samsung’s Gear S3 smartwatch in Russia, Sweden and the UAE in addition to its availability on the Gear S3 in the US, Singapore and Australia. More
The group of Australian banks seeking stronger negotiating powers with Apple over the NFC technology within its iPhone handsets have been denied access to it by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on the grounds that the proposed conduct would “reduce or distort competition in a number of markets” and that the benefits are “outweighed by the detriments”. More
Fashion brand Ted Baker and Swiss luxury watchmaker Mondaine are to integrate NFC payments into a range of watches to enable customers to make payments using technology supplied by Tappy Technologies, which has also partnered with Barclaycard to offer bPay contactless payment technology in the UK... More
Samsung Pay has launched in India with support from Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI Cards and Standard Chartered Bank, with Citibank India support expected “shortly”. The service has also integrated India’s leading mobile wallet Paytm and comes with support for peer-to-peer money transfers through the Indian government’s Unified Payments Interface platform. More
Luxury watchmaker Tag Heuer has unveiled the second generation of its connected watch range, powered by Google’s Android Wear 2.0 operating system and offering host card emulation (HCE) payments through Android Pay... More
A smartwatch collection from watchmaker Movado, powered by Google’s Android Wear 2.0 operating system, is to launch later this year, adding Android Pay capability to five new watches... More
Samsung Pay has launched in beta across Sweden, the first Nordic country to see the mobile payment service rolled out, with support from debit and credit card providers Mastercard, Mastercard SAS, Visa, Eurocard, and banks Nordea and SEB... More
Huawei has unveiled a new smartwatch at Mobile World Congress that supports NFC payments... More
Credit cards provided by US banks Citi and Wells Fargo are not supported by Android Wear 2.0, Google’s new version of its wearables operating system which brings host card emulation (HCE) based NFC payments to smartwatches... More
Swiss watchmaker Swatch is working on its own operating system for smartwatches, built in conjunction with research and technology provider CSEM... More
Nearly 3bn users will have access to retail banking services through smartphones, tablets, PCs and smartwatches by 2021, Juniper Research reveals, up 53% from 2017... More
Google has officially unveiled Android Wear 2.0, the new version of its operating system for smartwatches, and two new watches from LG — one of which comes with NFC to support HCE mobile payments using Android Pay... More
