The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has launched a physical Omny EMV payments card to enable passengers travelling on the city’s subway and bus services to make closed loop contactless ticketing payments... More
Owners of a smartwatch running Google’s Wear OS operating system will soon be able to use it to make contactless payments using Google Pay in 16 additional countries... More
Swedish sportswear brand Houdini has added an NFC-enabled zipper pull to its latest One Parka waterproof coat that lets consumers who purchase the garment connect with the brand and access use and care guides, support services and other digital features with a tap of their NFC smartphone... More
Passengers travelling on metro, rail, bus, tram and boat services in the Swedish capital of Stockholm will soon be able to use an EMV white label card issued by the city’s Storstockholm Lokaltrafik (SL) transit authority to make EMV contactless payments for their fares... More
Sweden’s central bank The Riksbank is to begin testing its e-krona central bank digital currency (CBDC) with external partners to assess how a digital krona would operate within a real world banking and payments infrastructure... More
Consumers, retailers and other business customers can now remotely verify their identity when opening an account or applying for a loan with Belgium-based Aion Bank by scanning the contactless chip embedded in an ID document with their NFC smartphone or other mobile device and validating the information via a facial recognition check... More
Projects to develop a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) for use by consumers and businesses are “more advanced” and “particularly strong” in emerging economies, according to analysis by global consultancy firm PwC... More
EXHIBITOR NEWS: Fidesmo is rolling out its Fidesmo Pay wearable payments service in Russia with support from eight of the country’s leading banks, enabling their customers to upload their bank cards to NFC-enabled wearables and use them to make contactless payments... More
Residents of Sweden will be able to store a digital certificate proving they have been inoculated against Covid-19 on their mobile phone or access their certificate via an NFC sticker attached to their passport by the beginning of June, the Swedish government has announced... More
Contactless in-store payments made with a mobile wallet worldwide exceeded in-store cash payments for the first time during 2020, new research reveals... More
Passengers using public transport across the Swedish capital of Stockholm can now make tokenized contactless payments for single adult fares on metro, rail, bus, tram and boat services by tapping their debit or credit card or smartphone at a ticket reader... More
Estonia is to test digital vaccine passports that will enable residents to prove they have been inoculated against Covid-19 as part of a project to create a globally recognised electronic certification programme... More
The governments of Denmark and Sweden have both announced that they are to develop and introduce digital vaccine certificates that will enable residents to prove they have been inoculated against Covid-19... More
NFCW EXPO: Fidesmo, a contactless platform provider that makes it possible for issuers to connect payment, transit ticketing and access control cards to a wide range of both passive and active devices, has opened a booth in the NFCW Expo... More
Customers of Swedish challenger bank Rocker will soon be able to take part in a proof-of-concept pilot of a biometric debit card that enables them to authenticate contactless in-store payments with their fingerprint... More
Finland’s OP Financial Group is to pilot a biometric payment card that will allow users to authenticate payments over the contactless transaction limit with their fingerprint rather than with a PIN... More
The proportion of in-store purchases made using contactless cards in the Nordic countries has risen from 57% in January this year to 75% in late October, an increase “in part driven by concerns around the potential spread of Covid-19,” regional payments processor Nets reports... More
Some 70% of Swedish consumers would be interested in having a biometric payment card so they can make high-value transactions without having to touch a point-of-sale (POS) terminal, a new survey reveals — and 59% would be willing to pay a monthly fee for one... More
Nearly two-thirds of consumers in Europe (63%) have abandoned a digital bank application in the past year, compared with 40% in 2019, according to new research... More
A working group set up by seven central banks and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has laid out a set of ground rules for the successful issuance of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)... More