UAE biometric database will allow residents not to carry ID — Gulf Business — “The UAE plans to utilise third generation biometric data with the goal of allowing residents not to carry their ID card within the next five years… By 2018, the authority is also aiming to allow 80% people to use government services via their mobile by operating the device’s Near Field Communication chip to read their Emirates ID.”
Technology
BBVA makes eight APIs available to kickstart open banking program
Spanish bank BBVA has launched its open banking program by making eight of its APIs commercially available for the first time, meaning that third-party companies including startups and developers will be able to build new products and services by accessing and integrating customers’ banking data into their applications. More
Euro Banking Association paper analyses cryptotechnologies in international payments
Euro Banking Association paper analyses cryptotechnologies in international payments — Euro Banking Association — “Our information paper shows how this technology could support industry players in meeting user expectations regarding speed, transparency and cost. We strongly believe that collaborative initiatives in this area, in particular, could unlock significant value for payment service providers and their customers.”
Control Ikea Home Smart products with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Home app
Control Ikea Home Smart products with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple’s Home app — Ikea — “Ikea is adding functionality to its smart lighting range by enabling people to voice control their lighting with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant and to set up and adjust lighting using Apple’s Home app and Siri voice commands. This takes Ikea one step closer to making smart home technology accessible for the many.”
NEC earbuds showcase hands-free biometric verification
NEC earbuds showcase hands-free biometric verification — New Atlas — “The new prototype earbuds are an application of NEC’s “hearable device user authentication technology”… NEC says the technology can identify the user within one second and with “greater than 99% accuracy”. Unlike biometrics based on the iris recognition or fingerprints, you don’t need to hold or look at your phone to use it.”
New cloud framework for mobile biometrics
New cloud framework for mobile biometrics — The Stack — “Researchers from the IEEE have proposed a high-performance cluster cloud framework to help manage the mountains of data associated with mobile biometric authentication… the team found that using a cloud-based biometric authentication framework, or BAMCloud, helped to achieve network speed performance of over eight times more than alternate methods.”
A guide to tokenization — The essential enabler for expanding the world of commerce
Tokenization is an essential enabler for a larger and more complex commerce world as the Internet of Things (IoT) propels payments to a range of new devices, says Proxama’s vice president of product marketing and product management for payments solutions... More
Apple Pay violates patents held by security technology inventor, lawsuit alleges
Apple Pay violates patents held by security technology inventor, lawsuit alleges — The New York Times — “A small Boston company, founded by the inventor of a popular corporate encryption technology called RSA SecurID, sued Apple and Visa on Sunday, arguing that the Apple Pay digital payment technology violates its patents.”
Skin Motion unveils soundwave tattoos that play audio clips when scanned by a smartphone
Tattoo artists across the US, Australia, Austria and Singapore have signed up to start offering their customers augmented reality tattoos that get inked onto the skin and play audio clips when scanned by a smartphone using a mobile app that is due to be released in June 2017. More
Sprint to support next generation IoT devices across its nationwide network
Sprint to support next generation IoT devices across its nationwide network — Sprint — “LTE Cat 1 is designed to support low-power applications on the Sprint network such as vehicle telematics and industrial IoT applications. LTE Cat M1 and LTE Cat NB1 are designed to support numerous other applications requiring ultra-low throughput and power consumption such as industrial sensors, asset trackers, or wearables.”
NXP links Android Things IoT platform to the Google Cloud
NXP has announced that its Android Things platform now supports the new Google Cloud IoT Core, enabling enterprise and city developers to use NXP’s platform “to help create a smart, interconnected system of devices that are securely managed and provisioned through the Google Cloud”. More
Delta is testing facial recognition technology, plans first biometric-based self-service bag drop in US
Delta is testing facial recognition technology, plans first biometric-based self-service bag drop in US — Delta — “Delta is introducing four self-service bag drop machines at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport this summer… One machine will be equipped to test facial recognition technology to match customers with their passport photos through identification verification, a first for US carriers.”
Researchers develop system that lets smartphones interact with objects using electromagnetic sensing
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
CMU researchers create touchpads with a can of spray paint
CMU researchers create touchpads with a can of spray paint — Carnegie Mellon University — “Walls, furniture, steering wheels, toys and even Jell-O can be turned into touch sensors with the technology, dubbed Electrick… The ‘trick’ is to apply electrically conductive coatings or materials to objects or surfaces, or to craft objects using conductive materials.”
European consortium to develop pan-industry online identity platform
A group of German and other European companies including banks, vehicle manufacturers and technology providers have signed a “corresponding declaration of intent” to establish a joint, pan-industry platform that will let their customers use a “so-called master key” for registration and identification when accessing online services across a range of sectors including government, aviation and retail. More
Hyundai builds car with contactless payments for Stand Up To Cancer donations
UK consumers will soon be able to make contactless donations to the Stand Up To Cancer charity by tapping their contactless card or NFC mobile phone against five payment points built into a Contactless Car designed by Hyundai Motor UK using a zero-emission Ioniq electronic vehicle. More
HSBC adds Apple Pay in Australia
HSBC has become the latest bank in Australia to add support for Apple Pay... More
Frost & Sullivan explains how the blockchain is set to change the payments ecosystem
Financial services will be “strongly impacted” by the rise of blockchain technology and the payment ecosystem as a whole will be the most interesting vertical to target for early blockchain technology successes — but the road to this success is long, says Frost & Sullivan’s global program director. More
STMicroelectronics launches ST25DV chips that can be read by both RFID readers and NFC phones
PARTNER NEWS: STMicroelectronics has introduced a range of dynamic tag chips that support both the NFC Type 5 and the ISO 15693 RFID specifications, enabling them to be read by both standard NFC smartphones and, at a longer range of up to one metre, by RFID readers. More
bPay contactless wearables enable automatic donations to UK charities
A new range of wearable devices equipped with Barclaycard’s bPay contactless technology will enable UK consumers to automatically donate the small change from any contactless payment they make using the device to charities of their choice. More