Wales issues tender for integrated national mobility app

Transport for Wales train pulling in at station

Transport for Wales (TfW) has issued a tender inviting suppliers to propose and develop a national Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) app that will enable door-to-door journey planning and payments for bus, rail, coach and taxi fares as well as for bicycle and e-scooter hire, car sharing and demand-responsive transport schemes... More










What's New in Payments

Mastercard comes under fire for sharing transaction data with Google

Google and Mastercard cut a secret ad deal to track retail sales — Bloomberg — “For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the US. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for… Google paid Mastercard millions of dollars for the data, according to two people who worked on the deal.”


US carriers set out joint mobile authentication platform plans

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon unveil next-generation mobile authentication platform details — AT&T — “This highly secure solution will deliver a cryptographically verified phone number and profile data for users of authorized applications with their consent. Authentication security is strengthened by processing unique attributes such as a network verified mobile number, IP address, SIM card attributes, phone number tenure, phone account type and more. In addition, advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities will be used to help assess risk and protect customers. Registered developers will be able to submit applications through a system using private and permissioned blockchain technology to help ensure application integrity.”



NFC World

GlaxoSmithKline puts NFC tags on store shelves

Thinfilm and GlaxoSmithKline bring NFC technology to leading over-the-counter brand Flonase — Thinfilm — “GSK introduced interactive ‘smart’ Flonase shelves in retail stores across Canada in an effort to educate consumers about the new product and guide them in their purchasing decision… The cloud-based platform integrates with the NFC hardware, enabling GSK to manage tags remotely, deliver custom messaging and content, view real-time consumer tapping activity, and develop valuable consumer insights through built-in analytics functionality.”


What's New in Payments

Supermarket giant Carrefour launches mobile wallet in China

Carrefour unveils digital wallet, teams up with China UnionPay to develop mobile payment ecosystem — Yicai Global — “Europe’s largest retailer, France-based Carrefour SA, has introduced its own mobile wallet dubbed CarrefourPay and joined hands with China UnionPay, a bankcard provider, to build a mobile payment ecosphere… The cross-industry partnership will see both firms working together in such areas as general payment platforms, membership systems, secure payments, big data analysis and smart retail.”





What's New in Payments

IBM’s Watson integrates Visa Token Service to enable tokenized payments on connected devices

IBM Visa

IBM is to integrate Visa Token Service into its Watson IoT cognitive technology platform to enable payments to be embedded into “any device connected to the Internet of Things (IoT)”, with all of IBM’s Watson IoT Platform customers gaining access to Visa payment services via IBM’s cloud service — rather than businesses needing to be approached on a one-by-one basis... More