PARTNER NEWS: Visitors to the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Stockholm, Sweden, this month will be able to purchase contactless payment wristbands that will enable payments at any Visa contactless terminal in the world. The wristbands, which will be active until the end of October, will be rolled out by Visa and digital security giant Gemalto. More
Loyalty
Kohl’s integrates Apple Pay with reward points
Customers at approximately 250 branches of US department store chain Kohl’s can now earn Yes2You Rewards loyalty points when they use Apple Pay to pay for their purchases at the checkout with a Kohl’s Charge card. More
Payback to add NFC payments to mobile app
German loyalty program Payback is to launch a new app in May that will include loyalty points, coupons and NFC mobile payments... More
PayPal CEO announces NFC payments expansion
Vodafone Wallet with PayPal NFC-enabled payments is now live in Spain and is expected to be made available across Europe throughout the “back half of 2016”, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman revealed during the company’s Q1 earnings call. More
Samsung Pay goes live at Woori Bank ATMs
Samsung Pay has enabled ATM withdrawals for customers of Woori Bank in South Korea, the company confirmed at the Samsung Developer Conference 2016... More
A quarter of Brits have made an in-store mobile payment
Almost a quarter of UK adults (24%) have used their mobile phone to make an in-store mobile payment and 12% do so on a regular basis, the Prepaid International Forum (PIF) reports... More
Tutuka to roll out cloud-based payments with Proxama
PARTNER NEWS: Prepaid card processor Tutuka has begun the implementation of digital payment solutions provider Proxama’s Digital Enablement Platform (DEP) for a fully independent cloud-based payment (CBP) solution in the Middle East, Asia and Africa... More
UK restaurants and bars roll out Z-Beacon technology
More than 1,000 restaurants, bars and pubs across the UK are deploying Z-Beacon, a new platform developed by QR code-based mobile payments provider Zapper... More
Apple Pay launches in Singapore
Apple Pay has begun rolling out across Singapore, letting consumers pay in store with compatible Apple devices and make purchases within participating mobile apps using their American Express cards, with support from Visa expected “soon”... More
Wearable smart stamp to support NFC payments
Healthcare technology provider MC10 and product solutions provider PCH are to commercialise MC10’s Wearable Interactive Stamp Platform (WiSP), an ultrathin, stretchable and disposable stamp worn on the skin that will enable brands to develop a “variety of consumer applications” including NFC payments. More
Dutch gas stations enable mobile payments with MyOrder
Motorists will be able to order and pay in advance for fuel at 220 Tamoil gas stations in the Netherlands from this summer using their smartphone and a new mobile refuelling feature enabled through MyOrder — the mobile ordering and payment service backed by Rabobank... More
Singapore carriers to use Gemalto NFC SIMs for transit ticketing rollout
PARTNER NEWS: Digital security giant Gemalto is supplying Singapore’s mobile network operators with UpTeq Multi-Tenant NFC SIMs for the rollout of a service enabling commuters to use a mobile version of their EZ-Link transit card to pay for public transportation and for purchases at some 30,000 local retail outlets... More
EMVCo updates tokenization specification with new payment account reference data element
EMVCo has updated its tokenization specification to include a new payment account reference (PAR) that can be used to link a cardholder’s payment token with their primary account number (PAN) without needing to use their underlying account number... More
SK Telecom launches hands free mobile payments and rewards
More than 100,000 customers of SK Telecom in Korea have subscribed to T Pay, a hands free mobile payment and rewards service based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology that launched earlier this month. More
Coca Cola to launch vending machine loyalty programme
Coca Cola is planning to launch a loyalty programme at select vending machines this spring that would let customers accumulate points to earn a free drink... More
Nielsen reports on mobile wallet market in India
Paytm is the most popular mobile payment app among Android smartphone owners in urban India, research from Nielsen reveals, with 39% of users with an internet connection making use of the service for an average duration of 70 minutes a month. More
Study examines attitudes to contactless payments in the UK, Germany and Spain
More than 90% of British, German and Spanish business leaders interviewed for a survey of attitudes to contactless technology have already invested in contactless projects and expect that 10% of all transactions will be contactless within the next three years, a white paper now available to download from the NFC World+ Knowledge Centre reveals. More
Fido Bank launches HCE mobile payments in Ukraine
Consumers across Ukraine can now make host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payments using The Pay, a new service launched by Fido Bank in partnership with mobile wallet platform provider PriNum... More
More than 100m people will make an NFC mobile payment in 2016
More than 100m people around the world will use an NFC handset to make a purchase this year, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics, and the value of transactions conducted via NFC handsets will grow from US$30bn in 2016 to US$240bn in 2021. More
People’s United Bank adds Samsung Pay
Customers of People’s United Bank in the US can now add their debit cards to Samsung Pay... More