Alipay is making it possible for Chinese tourists to purchase transport passes for Singapore, Thailand and Macau ahead of travel and then collect them by scanning a barcode on their mobile phones at booths and kiosks at their destination... More
Archive: News in brief
AirAsia picks Yoyo for mobile payments
UK startup Yoyo is to provide a mobile payments and loyalty app to Malaysian budget airline AirAsia, City AM reports... More
Credit unions to adopt Apple Pay
A number of US credit unions are actively working towards adopting Apple Pay NFC payments, credit union technology provider Co-op Financial Services has revealed... More
Half of UK consumers use digital wallets
More than half of UK consumers (54%) say that they often or always use digital wallets to pay for goods online, according to research from online payments service Skrill, and 17% of 18-24 year olds are also paying for goods and services in-store with a mobile device... More
TD Bank partners with Moven
Toronto-Dominion Bank is expected to announce a partnership with New York based banking app maker Moven to help its customers use their smartphones to keep track of every purchase they make, The Globe and Mail reports... More
Contactless donations expand in London
Caffe Nero and Leon Restaurants have become the first UK retailers to join Penny for London, a service first introduced on the Transport for London (TfL) network that automatically collects small charitable donations when participating consumers use their contactless cards to pay... More
Barclays to test beacons in branches
Barclays is to run a three month Bluetooth beacon technology trial at its Pinstone Street branch in Sheffield, UK, to alert bank staff to the presence of customers with disabilities... More
Scotiabank adds smartwatch app
Canada’s Scotiabank has launched a Quick Balance app for the Samsung Gear 2 and Samsung Gear S smartwatches that lets customers check their account balance with a swipe of the screen... More
Indian shopping malls to pilot iBeacon
Mobile marketing and advertising platform BeaconStream is to pilot iBeacon technology in malls in Bengaluru and Chennai, India, within the next three weeks, The Hindu reports... More
Sephora adds Apple Pay
Cosmetics store chain Sephora has rolled out support for Apple Pay in all five of its Bay Area stores in the US and is also testing NFC payments acceptance in one Manhattan location in New York... More
Restaurants in India offer NFC payments
Indian restaurant chain Adigas is rolling out NFC payments to its customers in partnership with mobile payment company iKaaz, starting first in its Brahmin’s Coffee Bar in south Bangalore... More
HouseTab drives usage with charity donations
Mobile app HouseTab is to donate US$1 to the Food Bank For New York City each time someone registers to use the app until the beginning of January, and will make additional donations every time the app is used to pay for a tab or to send drinks or food... More
17% of French consumers make mobile payments
Almost one fifth (17%) of French consumers have now made a mobile payment, with 25% of 16-34 year olds claiming to have done so compared with 13% of 35-75 year olds, research released by telecoms company Prixtel has revealed... More
Magyar Telekom launches NFC in Hungary
Magyar Telekom, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom and a member of the Hungarian Mobile Wallet Association, has launched the MobilTarca NFC mobile wallet in Hungary after a successful pilot that began in July last year... More
Android Pay to use fingerprint security
Android Pay, the mobile payments service being developed by China UnionPay, will use both NFC and fingerprint verification, Want China Times reports... More
Semble picks Gemalto for NFC in NZ
Semble, the NFC payments joint venture between New Zealand’s carriers and the Paymark payments network, is using Gemalto’s Allynis Trusted Service Hub to secure over-the-air provisioning of payment credentials to users’ NFC devices... More
Contactless makes Word of the Year shortlist
‘Contactless’ has made the shortlist for the Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year 2014 but missed out on the top spot to the word ‘vape’... More
Harris+Hoole reports 200,000 mobile payments
Tesco-backed UK coffee chain Harris+Hoole’s mobile ordering and payments app has now been downloaded more than 22,000 times and has been used by customers over 200,000 times since its launch in June 2014... More
Dunkin’ Mobile gets 10m downloads
Dunkin’ Donuts’ Dunkin’ Mobile payments and rewards app has been downloaded more than 10m times since its launch in 2012 and two million customers have signed up for its DD Perks loyalty program, available on mobile and via a plastic card, the US merchant has revealed... More
CUP to launch Android Pay in China
China UnionPay (CUP) is planning to introduce “Android Pay”, an NFC-based mobile payments service, in the third quarter of 2015, Yicai reports... More