Students attending Hainan Lu Xun Middle School in the Chinese city of Sanya are the first in the country to trial a digital yuan hard wallet device that enables them to make payments to designated merchants on and off the school’s campus using China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) as well as verify their identity using NFC... More
European consumers consider the ability to make instant contactless payments, including person-to-person transfers, to be a priority and “a very important selling point” for a digital euro, according to European Central Bank (ECB) research... More
The central bank of Bangladesh has announced that it has added approval for contactless debit and prepaid card payments in a circular that also sets a PIN-free transaction limit of Tk3,000 (US$35) and requires card issuers to notify customers of each transaction via SMS... More
Shipments of biometric payment cards with embedded fingerprint sensors will grow by almost 850% and reach a total of 173m worldwide by 2026, according to a forecast by Juniper Research... More
The total transaction value of contactless card payments made in UK stores “surged” by 40.2% in 2021 and the average number of contactless payments made each day increased by 27.5% compared with the previous year, according to Barclaycard... More
The majority of European consumers would feel comfortable with contactless transaction limits of up to €150 (US$169), three times the current European Union limit of €50 (US$56), according to Payments Europe research... More
Customers of Santander bank in the UK can now set their own contactless transaction limit lower than the maximum of £100 (US$132) introduced by the UK government in October... More
More than 488,000 consumers in Nigeria have downloaded an eNaira digital wallet and conducted transactions worth a total of 62m naira (US$151,000) in the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) since its launch in October, according to a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) spokesman... More
Some 50,000 customers of Starling Bank have chosen to set their own contactless spending limit to a lower amount than the maximum of £100 (US$135) per contactless transaction that the UK government introduced in October... More
Nearly three-quarters of UK consumers (73.1%) want the option to set their own contactless spending limit rather than it being set automatically when the country increases that limit to £100 (US$136) in October, according to a survey by KIS Finance... More
Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland will be able to set their own contactless spending limit when the UK increases its national transaction limit to £100 (US$137) on 15 October... More
Customers of DBS Bank in Singapore can now lock or unlock their debit or credit cards, enable or disable certain types of transaction — including contactless and mobile payments — and set a monthly spending limit for their card accounts from their digital banking app in real time... More
The UK will begin rolling out a new £100 (US$137) spending limit for contactless payments from 15 October 2021, UK Finance has announced... More
The total value of contactless card transactions worldwide will reach US$2.5tn in 2021, up from US$1.7tn in 2020, Juniper Research predicts. The researchers also forecast that card payments will retain “the majority share of overall contactless transaction values at 79% in 2021”. More
Contactless payments will account for more than half (57%) of the total global value of transactions made at the point of sale (POS) by 2026, compared with just under 25% in 2021, Juniper Research predicts... More
The planned increase in the UK’s contactless transaction limit from £45 to £100 announced by the UK Treasury in March could come into effect on 5 August, according to a Reddit user... More
Some 17.3 million people or nearly a third (32%) of adult consumers in the UK were registered to use their smartphone or smart watch to make mobile payments in stores by the end of 2020, a “significant” increase of 7.4 million people compared with 2019, according to UK Finance... More
China Construction Bank (CCB) is piloting a biometric ‘hard wallet’ smart card that lets customers store digital yuan and authenticate payments made using the central bank digital currency (CBDC) with their fingerprint... More
Customers of BBVA Mexico can now apply for a ‘blank’ biometric credit card that enables them to authenticate payments with their fingerprint... More
Chinese consumers can now open digital yuan wallets using different levels of customer identification depending on the transaction and balance limits they require and can activate wallets “with the lowest authority” with just their mobile phone number in line with the “principle of controllable anonymity”, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has revealed... More
