Vodafone customers in five major European markets will be able to use their Visa cards to make NFC mobile payments from the second quarter of this year with a new SIM-based service that makes use of tokenization technology. More
Loyalty
PayPal explains why it’s buying mobile wallet provider Paydiant
“What Paydiant has is a clarity of focus on mobile and how large merchants need to utilise mobile to connect with their customers — they’re a small company doing that very successfully with some really cool brands,” Anuj Nayar, senior director of global initiatives at PayPal, has told NFC World as the payment giant prepares to complete its acquisition of the payments platform provider for a reported US$280m... More
Finnish banks add HCE payments to Pivo mobile wallet
Finland’s largest financial services group is to add support for HCE payments to the mobile wallet app it introduced two years ago... More
Seqr promotes mobile payments with cashback offers to users
Sweden-based mobile payments provider Seamless is offering users of its Seqr mobile payments service up to 3% cashback on their purchases, “valid on all purchases and effective on top of any other loyalty program or discount.” The offer is designed to persuade more consumers to adopt mobile payments, CEO Peter Fredell has told NFC World, and is financed via a mixture of revenue streams. More
Pizza Hut could let customers order and pay for pizza from their cars
Pizza Hut is testing a proof-of-concept “connected car” system that would let its customers order and pay for pizza from their vehicle before identifying themselves when arriving at the restaurant through Bluetooth beacons placed in designated parking bays... More
PayPal to buy MCX supplier Paydiant
Paypal is to acquire Paydiant, a white label mobile payments specialist and developer of a platform that allows retailers to incorporate payment, loyalty and offers functionality into their own apps... More
Oberthur’s Pearl SE embedded in Galaxy S6
Samsung’s new flagship handsets, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, include an embedded secure element (eSE) from Oberthur Technologies... More
Google teams up with US carriers for NFC mobile payments
Google Wallet will be pre-installed on all Android phones supplied by Softcard partners AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless from “later this year”, Ariel Bardin, Google’s vice president of payments, has announced... More
Rabobank launches embedded NFC payments service
Customers of Dutch financial institution Rabobank with a Samsung Galaxy S4 or Galaxy Note 3 can now use a mobile wallet app that works with the secure element embedded in their mobile device to make NFC payments, check balances, store loyalty cards and redeem vouchers... More
Dynamic mag stripe card Swyp goes on pre-order
Start-up Qvivr has begun taking pre-orders for Swyp, a US$49 dynamic magnetic stripe card that uses Bluetooth LE, incorporates buttons and a display and works in conjunction with a smartphone app to emulate up to 25 credit, debit, gift or loyalty cards... More
Starbucks increases mobile payments to 16% of total
Starbucks is now processing an average of seven million mobile payments a week, representing around 16% of all its transactions, CEO Howard Schultz has revealed during a first quarter earnings call in which he also provided an update on the Mobile Order and Pay service the coffee giant introduced in Portland, Oregon in December last year... More
7-Eleven HK adds mobile payment and rewards
Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has launched 7-Fans, a QR code-based mobile payment and loyalty app that rewards customers with one point for every HK$5 spent using the service at any of more than 900 stores across Hong Kong... More
Wirecard unveils HCE wristband for payments, loyalty and more
German payments technology provider Wirecard has developed a wearable wristband that allows a user to make a payment using host card emulation (HCE) at any contactless POS terminal... More
Apple Watch owners to get beacon promos at Marsh Supermarkets
US grocery chain Marsh Supermarkets is to use Bluetooth beacons to deliver targeted information such as shopping lists and recipes directly to a shopper’s Apple Watch or smartphone, marking the “world’s first iBeacon-wearable integration at retail”... More
Google Wallet 8.0 now available
Version 8.0 of Google Wallet is now available to download from Google Play in the US... More
Emirates banks move towards mobile wallets
The UAE Banks Federation has announced the completion of the pre-implementation phase of a project to develop a mobile wallet platform that all its 51 member banks will be able to use to offer P2P, mobile payments and loyalty programs to their customers... More
MasterCard to offer interactive payment cards to its issuers around the world
Interactive payment card developer Dynamics has signed a deal with MasterCard that will see the payments network offering the startup’s technology to its issuers around the world. MasterCard has also participated in Dynamics’ US$70m Series C funding round along with Canada’s CIBC and existing investors. More
One in four US smartphone owners have paid by mobile
Almost a quarter (24%) of US smartphone owners have now used one or more mobile payment apps, research from PunchTab has found... More
Mobile payments platform Sixdots goes live with multiple banks in Belgium
Customers of nine banks representing 80% of the Belgian market can now make use of Sixdots, a mobile wallet service that uses a combination of QR codes and a six-digit PIN to make payments in stores, online and between friends... More
One in ten US iPhone 6 owners have now used Apple Pay
Apple Pay is yet to gain widespread adoption among iPhone 6 owners due to poor awareness of which stores accept the NFC payments technology and a lack of understanding of how the service works, a survey conducted by InfoScout has found. Those who have used it, however, compare it highly favourably to using a traditional plastic card. More