An undisclosed global payments company is to incorporate bendable fingerprint sensors into smart cards as part of a worldwide program to be rolled out in partnership with Norwegian biometrics provider Idex... More
Archive: Newswire
2.2bn NFC-enabled handset shipments by 2020, IHS Technology predicts
Shipments of NFC-enabled handsets will increase to 756m in 2015, up from 444m last year, rising to 2.2bn by 2020, IHS Technology has forecast... More
Barclaycard launches second generation bPay wearable payment devices
Barclaycard has unveiled a second generation of its bPay wristbands and is to add contactless-enabled keyfobs and stickers to the range of bPay devices that will be made available for purchase on 1 July. More
Fans get contactless entry to football matches in Cyprus
PARTNER NEWS: Season ticket holders at a Cypriot first division football club will soon get into the team’s Antonis Papadopoulos Stadium on match day by tapping contactless keyfobs — or wristbands for younger supporters — against NFC turnstiles at the entrance. More
Evercoss to pre-install mobile wallet on handsets
Indonesia’s largest smartphone and tablet manufacturer is to pre-install a mobile wallet on up to three million of its mobile devices annually, allowing users to make QR code-based in-store payments, online payments and P2P funds transfers using a platform supplied by mobile wallet provider Cellum... More
McGee Group adds NFC inspection tags to trucks
Truck drivers from UK-based construction firm McGee Group can now log their daily vehicle inspections by tapping a tablet or smartphone against NFC tags mounted on their lorries, using a platform supplied by mobility solutions provider Mobilengine... More
Amazon’s voice-driven home shopping device available for pre-order in the US
US consumers will soon be able to reorder supplies and control their home appliances using Amazon Echo, the connected device that uses voice recognition to complete spoken commands to shop, play music, read the news and more... More
CUA credit union reports rising interest in redi2PAY HCE mobile payments service
The number of customers using CUA’s redi2PAY HCE mobile payments service more than 35 times per month was about three times higher in March 2015 than it was six months earlier, and the number of customers using mobile payments five to 14 times per month was up 63% for the same period, the Australian credit union has revealed... More
Alibaba and Ant Financial invest nearly $1bn in Koubei mobile commerce platform
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Alipay parent Ant Financial have each invested RMB3bn (US$483m) into Koubei, a joint venture that will let consumers order and pay for local services in China using their smartphone, “with an initial focus on the food and beverage segment”... More
30% of donors use contactless card during London charity trial
Nearly a third of shoppers at Westfield London shopping centre who donated to charity during a 100-day pilot put in place by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), Save the Children and Visa Europe Collab used their contactless card, as did one in five who donated at one of the city’s Costa coffee shop counter collection points... More
Canadian carriers sign up for independent Suretap platform
Canadian carrier Rogers has spun off its Suretap NFC mobile wallet service as a separate company, with the brand now operating independently and open to other carriers... More
NXP introduces plug and play NFC solution for Internet of Things
PARTNER NEWS: NXP Semiconductors has unveiled a ‘plug and play’ NFC controller with integrated firmware and an NCI interface that is aimed at accelerating NFC adoption in the internet of things (IoT) by allowing hardware makers to rapidly build the technology into any device... More
Crunchfish unveils touchless storefront using gesture recognition
Swedish gesture recognition firm Crunchfish has developed an interactive screen that can be placed in shop windows to encourage passersby to browse deals, read reviews and compare products with a swipe, push or grab of their hand... More
Spanish supermarket chain Bonpreu rolls out mobile payments to 170 stores
Spanish supermarket chain Bonpreu is to roll out a mobile payments service to 170 stores, using a platform developed by Dinube that combines proprietary tokenization algorithms, NFC and biometric fingerprint security... More
Supenta seeks funding for NFC gaming smartphone case
Mobile gaming provider Supenta is raising funds on Kickstarter for an NFC-enabled smartphone case with a built-in game controller that fits on to a smartphone device and uses energy harvesting technology to power its components... More
International retailer to install NFC shelf edge labels in 250 stores across Europe
Imagotag, a subsidiary of electronic shelf labels supplier Store Electronic Systems (SES), has entered into an exclusive agreement in Germany with an unnamed “leading international retailer” to install its NFC e-paper displays in 250 stores across Europe... More
NFC Forum adds support for Type V tags
The NFC Forum has released a new candidate specification that extends the functionality of NFC devices to include formal support for a new category of NFC tag... More
Almost one in six US consumers are using mobile wallets
Almost one in six US consumers (15%) have used a mobile wallet in the past six months, up from 9% in the same period in 2013, and an additional 22% are likely to adopt mobile wallet functionality in the coming six months, a study released by market research and consulting firm Chadwick Martin Bailey has found... More
Gimbal aims to turn any Bluetooth Low Energy device into a beacon
Mobile location and proximity services provider Gimbal has begun licensing its Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon firmware to enable almost any device with BLE to act as a beacon — including ATMs, jukeboxes, access points, vending machines and more... More
Intelligent Environments replaces PINs with emoji passcodes
Software provider Intelligent Environments has launched an emoji-only passcode system that lets consumers log into their bank’s mobile app using four emoji characters instead of traditional PINs... More