Public transportation users in the Chinese city of Jinan can now use the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) to pay their fares on any of the area’s buses... More
Asides
More than a million US students now have NFC student IDs
More than one million US students have now added their student ID card to their NFC mobile phone, double the half a million who had adopted mobile campus IDs a year ago, mobile credential provider Transact Campus reports... More
Shinhan Bank to introduce face biometrics at ATMs in South Korea
Korea’s Shinhan Bank is to begin rolling out biometric ATMs that will allow customers to access ATM services without needing to carry a bank card... More
Google Wallet goes live in five new countries
Google Wallet is now available in Argentina, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Montenegro, bringing the total number of countries where the digital wallet is available to 66. More
Seven-Eleven stores in Japan to let consumers access ATM services via face biometrics
Seven Bank, a division of Seven-Eleven Japan’s parent company Seven & i Holdings, is to let consumers use face biometrics to deposit and withdraw cash and perform banking services at 20,000 ATMs in Seven-Eleven stores across Japan. More
Apple picks iris biometrics for Vision Pro virtual reality headset user authentication
Apple has integrated a secure enclave into its new Vision Pro virtual reality headset that supports Optic ID, “a new secure authentication system that analyses a user’s iris under various invisible LED light exposures”... More
Beijing Subway lets passengers use their palm as a ticket
Passengers travelling on the Beijing Daxing Airport Express subway service in the Chinese capital can now pass through ticketing gates by scanning their palm... More
Richmond International Airport to pilot contactless biometric cards for access control
Richmond International Airport is the first in the USA to test contactless biometric access control cards that enable employees or other authorised cardholders to verify their identity at entrances to secure areas using two-factor authentication... More
Brazil to pilot digital currency in stores
The Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) is to begin piloting the use of its proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC) across a range of transactions including in-store and offline NFC payments... More
Rwanda to roll out digital ID cards for use on smartphones
Rwanda is to develop and launch a digital national identity card that residents will be able to store and use on their smartphone and which will replace the country’s existing physical ID card, according to Rwanda’s Minister of ICT and Innovation Paula Ingabire... More
Contactless payments drive 350% increase in EMV transactions at vending machines in Canada and the US
More than half of all EMV card transactions at food and beverage vending machines in the USA and Canada in 2022 were contactless (51.69%) and contactless payments were the main driver for a 350% year-on-year growth in cashless vending machine micropayments made using EMV cards, according to a new study... More
Swatch launches contactless payments on wearables in Thailand
Buyers of Swatch watches in Thailand can now opt to make contactless payments with their NFC wearable device using the Swiss-based company’s SwatchPay! contactless payments service. More
Ardshinbank lets merchants in Armenia accept contactless payments on standard Android NFC devices
Armenia’s Ardshinbank has launched a software-only point of sale (softPOS) solution that enables merchants to accept contactless payments on Android NFC smartphones, tablets and other devices. ... More
Belgium to roll out national digital identity app
The Federal Government of Belgium is to enable residents to store a digital version of their national identity card along with other official credentials in a digital ID wallet on their smartphone... More
Swiss government to introduce digital national identity cards
Residents of Switzerland will be able to download and store a digital version of their national ID card in a digital identity wallet on their smartphone along with other digital credentials such as club membership cards and event tickets... More
Bengaluru metro to let passengers pay with their face
The Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRCL) in the Indian city of Bengaluru is planning to roll out AI-powered biometric facial recognition technology that will enable passengers with monthly travel passes to walk through station automatic fare collection gates by verifying their identity with their face and without needing a physical smart card, pass or token... More
Apple to add support for NFC peer-to-peer payments?
Apple has added support for NFC peer-to-peer payments to its iOS 15.5 beta 2 release, enabling users to transfer money between iPhones with a tap, according to a tweet. ... More
Apple Pay is most popular payments app with Generation Z in US
Apple Pay is the most popular payments app with Generation Z teenagers in the USA, followed by Venmo in second place, Square’s Cash App in third and PayPal fourth, according to a survey published by Piper Sandler investment bank... More
National Bank of Iraq to trial biometric payment cards
The National Bank of Iraq is to pilot biometric payment cards that will allow users to authenticate contactless transactions with their fingerprints... More
Uber to integrate train, coach and plane tickets into UK app
Uber is to enable users in the UK to purchase train, coach and plane tickets for long-distance journeys within its mobile app as part of a plan to create a ‘superapp’ that offers “a one-stop shop for travel”... More