PARTNER NEWS: Transaction technology provider Carta Worldwide has hired Elizabeth “Buffy” Duke as its vice president of business development... More
Payments veteran Buffy Duke joins Carta
mcommerce
MCX confirms it will launch CurrentC this summer in a “mid-sized market”
Retailer owned mobile payments consortium MCX has confirmed to NFC World that it will launch its CurrentC mobile wallet in an unspecified mid-sized US market soon, following the announcement that founder member Best Buy will begin to accept rival mobile payments service Apple Pay in its stores later this year... More
Forecast: 100m Apple Pay-capable phones in US by 2020
Some 100m Apple Pay-capable smartphones will be available in the US in 2020, up from 53m this year, according to Mercator Advisory Group... More
Carrefour extends grocery shopping to smartwatches
Customers at a Carrefour hypermarket in Paris are now able to use their smartwatch to access their digital shopping list, tick off items as they go and receive loyalty points when they check out... More
Samsung unveils Galaxy S6 with NFC and LoopPay mobile payments
Owners of Samsung’s new Galaxy S6 flagship phone will be able to make mobile payments at merchants equipped with both legacy magnetic stripe card terminals and those with contactless POS terminals, Samsung boss JK Shin has revealed... More
Supermarket in a box gives staff chance to shop at work
Employees at chip maker STMicroelectronics’ Catania office in Italy can now order and pay for fresh food, groceries and personal hygiene products from their mobile phone and then collect their order from a unique “supermarket in a box” based in the office car park... More
Mozido buys PayEase
Mobile payments platform provider Mozido has acquired Chinese cross-border payment gateway provider PayEase with the aim of introducing its mobile payments and retail marketing solutions into the Chinese market... More
Wintrust lets customers withdraw cash with their mobile phones
Wintrust Financial is updating its fleet of 190 ATMs in Chicago to enable its mobile banking customers to withdraw cash by requesting money on their smartphone then scanning an on-screen QR code when they get to the ATM. More
Pivo passes 100,000 active users
Finnish mobile wallet Pivo has now been downloaded to 300,000 smartphones and a third of users — more than 100,000 — are making use of the app every day... More
NFC World celebrates its sixth birthday
NFC World is six years old today and we are celebrating with a top 50,000 website ranking on Alexa.com, 129,493 unique visitors in October and a new rate card designed to make advertising on NFC World the single most effective way for mobile commerce suppliers to reach new customers in the year ahead... More
23% of Canadians have made a mobile payment
Almost a quarter of Canadians (23%) have now made a mobile payment in-store with nearly a third (29%) having used their device to make an online purchase, new research from PayPal Canada has found... More
Singtel charges Angry Birds toys to buyers phone bills
Singapore carrier Singtel is taking carrier billing into the physical goods world with a pilot test of a service that lets customers order Angry Birds plush toys for delivery to their home address and charge the cost to their phone bill... More
Mobile network operators partner with Boku to bring carrier billing to the physical world
Carrier billing provider Boku has partnered with UK mobile network operators O2, EE and Vodafone to make it possible for customers to charge public transport tickets, takeaway food, cups of coffee and other “click and collect” physical world purchases to their mobile phone bill... More
No support for carriers’ NFC SIMs in Apple devices?
Softcard, the US carrier-backed NFC venture formerly known as Isis, won’t have access to the NFC support in the new iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch until 2015, a blog post by CEO Michael Abbott suggests — and, even then, it looks as though it won’t be via a conventional NFC-enabled SIM... More
UK retailers install hi-tech mannequins that let customers buy what they see in the window
UK retailers House of Fraser, Hawes & Curtis and Bentalls are using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons installed in display mannequins to let customers get information about outfits displayed in their shop windows and around their stores, receive special offers and buy items with their mobile phone... More
US merchant groups call for creation of open tokenization standards
Leading merchant groups in the US have come together to call for the creation of an alternative set of open standards for tokenized payments that would be managed by an independent body such as ISO or ANSI — rather than by the payments industry. More
Waitrose showcases QR payments
Upmarket UK supermarket chain Waitrose has shown off a proof-of-concept mobile shopping service, based on Ensygnia’s Onescan technology, that “allows customers to complete a payment in-store using a mobile phone app, completing a purchase direct from any iPad screen in the store, without the need to head to the till point”... More
Consumers shop more on smartphones
“Nearly all mobile payments growth on Adyen’s platform in Q2 originated from smartphones,” the payments processor’s latest global Mobile Payments Index has found... More
Target launches image recognition app
US retail chain Target has launched an image recognition app that lets customers buy items from magazine adverts, catalogs and other media showing the retailer’s ‘In a Snap’ icon... More
IBM partners with Monitise
IBM and Monitise have formed a strategic alliance designed to help financial institutions deliver cloud-based mobile banking, payments and commerce solutions to their customers... More