PARTNER NEWS: Cilab’s ci230 high speed tester takes a whole new approach to NFC testing that makes it faster and easier to conduct pre-certification testing, makes the certification process quicker and cheaper, lets customers get a fast return on investment — and a competitive advantage from speeding up time to market... More
Despite still being only in a test phase in India, mobile payments via Facebook’s WhatsApp instant messaging platform will launch in more markets this year, according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg... More
NFC Forum adds NFC tag certification to certification program — NFC Forum — “Tag/inlay, NFC reader and handset manufacturers for the first time will be able to test and verify the performance and interoperability of all the key components in the NFC ecosystem. Certification will help ensure that NFC tags, readers and handsets provide consistent, compelling and connected user experiences.”
Payments standards body EMVCo has added a specification for QR code payments in merchant-presented mode, following on from a spec for QR code payments in consumer-presented mode that it released in mid-July... More
Churchgoers in England will begin trialling contactless donations in 40 churches across the country this summer, as the Church of England announces plans to roll out contactless handheld terminals to process card payments for donations as a replacement for loose change... More
A select group of ABN Amro customers has begun piloting payments using NFC-enabled rings supplied by Kerv and smartwatches... More
Chinese satellite relays a quantum signal between cities — Wired — “This experiment was a crucial test for a budding technology called quantum cryptography, which uses quantum particles like photons to send secure information… Researchers like Lu and his colleagues think quantum cryptography could be the encryption tool of the future.”
Employees at UK bank Barclays and Barclaycard’s London office have begun piloting a new payment concept that allows them to buy low-value goods in the staff restaurant by scanning the barcode on the items using their smartphone and completing the purchase “with a single click” without needing to visit the physical checkout. More
Public-private sector digital currency experiment releases results of phase II — Payments Canada — “The Bank of Canada, along with Payments Canada, R3 and seven commercial banks, today disclosed the results of phase II of Project Jasper, an experimental wholesale interbank payment system, using digital ledger technology (DLT)… The results show that, despite progress made, underpinning an entire wholesale payments system with DLT still faces many hurdles.”
Google and Stripe eye a slice of UPI pie in India — Economic Times — “Google is preparing to introduce its digital wallet, Android Pay, in India this year, anchoring the platform to the government-backed Unified Payments Interface as are other global companies including Stripe and WhatsApp… Google has started testing UPI on its Android Pay platform, said one person aware of the developments.”
Samsung has responded to the group of hackers from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) who managed to defeat the iris recognition system on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones, saying that the hackers’ claims could “only have been made under a rare combination of circumstances”. More
Obtaining Mastercard and Visa security compliance and keeping in line with the payment ecosystem’s best practices will help to “reinforce” host card emulation (HCE) security levels and minimise the success rates of hacking attempts, says HCE and tokenization provider Antelop Solutions. More
Open communication and the right education for customers is key to the successful deployment of a host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payment service in a country where new banks — with their simple products and new communication style — are becoming more attractive to the younger generation, says Czech bank CSOB’s innovation manager. More
Restaurant chains Eat and Bel-Air are piloting a service in their London locations that delivers real-time receipts to a customer’s mobile banking app by linking to the purchases they make using their bank cards at the retailer’s point-of-sale terminal. The service is also being trialled by UK challenger bank Monzo. More
Employees at Pick n Pay supermarket stores and Absa Bank staff across South Africa have been trialling a biometric card developed by Mastercard that lets them make a payment at any EMV terminal and authenticate the transaction by placing their finger on the embedded sensor. Additional trials are planned over the next few months, with a full roll out expected “later this year”. More
Customers of Lloyds Banking Group across the UK will soon be able to log into their online banking accounts using fingerprint or facial recognition through Microsoft’s Windows Hello biometric authentication technology. The banking group is to trial the solution with Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers with Windows 10 devices in the second half of this year. More
The value proposition for using mobile payments must be clearly stated to customers in order to change their behaviour from using plastic cards to mobile phones, says the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston following the completion of a research project that tested four mobile wallet models including NFC and QR codes... More
LG will launch its LG Pay mobile payments service in Korea in June this year using a mobile payment technology that works by “generating a magnetic signal from a mobile device such as a smartphone, and paying it to a general credit card terminal”. More
A blockchain-based digital identity network that will let Canadians verify their identity to organisations of their choice and access services such as new bank accounts, driving licenses or utilities using a mobile app is now undergoing testing ahead of a planned launch later this year. The service is backed by a group of Canadian banks that includes BMO, CIBC, Desjardins, RBC, Scotiabank and TD. More
PARTNER NEWS: A new embedded secure element and NFC solution from NXP will make it possible for mobile transactions to be conducted at the same speed as contactless card transactions... More
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