More than one billion contactless transactions worth in excess of €12.6bn have been made by Visa cardholders across Europe in the past 12 months, research from Visa Europe has found, with its customers spending €1.6bn using their contactless cards in March 2015 alone — a three-fold increase compared to the same month in 2014. More
Apple is reportedly planning to launch Apple Pay in the UK on July 14... More
Pictures of a circuit board believed to be part of the next iPhone show the device includes a different NFC chip from NXP... More
Some 14% of Canadian consumers say they are highly interested in making in-store mobile payments and 11% are also interested in using a wearable device such as a smartwatch to do so, research from payment services supplier Tsys has revealed. More
Chinese e-commerce giant Ant Financial has completed a Series A financing round that values the company at more than US$45bn and makes the Chinese government a stakeholder, New York Times reports... More
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Users of ING’s mobile banking app in the Netherlands can now use their voice or a fingerprint to authorise payments... More
More than a third (38%) of Americans believe biometrics will increase their smartphone security, while 25% are skeptical and 37% don’t know, research from Unisys Security Insights finds... More
Apple has filed a US patent application for a payments service that would enable peer-to-peer money transfers via NFC and Bluetooth... More
Apple has reportedly held meetings with Korean financial institutions, including Hana Financial Group, as it looks to launch Apple Pay in the country... More
Researchers from Nottingham Trent University (NTU) have invented a method of embedding NFC chips into yarns which are then woven and knitted to make fabrics for clothing. The chips could be used to provide enhanced security in retail, for manufacturing and stock-taking purposes, or to allow for items donated to charity to be tracked around the world. More
More than 7,600 taxi drivers in 90 cities across the UK and Ireland can accept NFC mobile payments from passengers using the taxi-hailing app Cab:app through an mPOS gateway provided by Payworks... More
French spirits brand Rémy Martin is to launch a connected cognac bottle equipped with an NFC tag that will let consumers check the product is authentic and whether it has been opened and resealed, as well as allowing them to retrieve rewards and special offers after it has been purchased. More
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Drivers in Las Vegas can pick up offers from local businesses via 16 interactive on-street parking meters... More
Bus users in Houston, Texas will be able to pay for and display tickets on their smartphones after the Metropolitan Transit Authority signed a contract with mobile ticketing specialist GlobeSherpa... More
PayPal has bought digital money transfer provider Xoom for about US$890m... More
MasterCard is to test a system that will approve online purchases with a face or fingerprint scan later this year... More
The Fido Alliance has added new NFC and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transport protocols to its Universal Second Factor (U2F) authentication specification. “With these new transport specifications, Fido U2F is appropriate for mobile and wireless applications and devices that do not have a USB port,” the organisation says. More
Five hundred London buses have been equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons to send targeted messages to commuters, as part of out-of-home media owner Exterion Media’s beacon rollout across “major cities” in the UK in partnership with mobile marketing and NFC specialist Proxama... More
Guests using Cathay Pacific’s business and first class lounge at San Francisco International Airport will be able to receive information about food and beverage menus and other available amenities with their smartphone via beacons installed across the lounge... More
A quarter of UK consumers fear that using mobile payment services over cards and cash will see them spend more and make more impulse purchases, research from price comparison service uSwitch has revealed. More