Music fans, investors and collectors who purchase exclusive limited edition vinyl albums released by US company Vinylkey can authenticate their purchase, register proof of ownership and link to unique digital assets by tapping an NFC tag embedded in the physical album with their smartphone... More
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot project “in the near term” and the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) is also exploring the possible development of a CBDC in line with its wider payment digitisation plans... More
Negotiators from the European Parliament and the European Council have provisionally agreed the text of a Digital Markets Act (DMA) that will obligate “gatekeeper” technology companies such as Apple and Google to “allow app developers fair access to the supplementary functionalities of smartphones (eg NFC chip)”... More
Apple Pay and Google Pay are suspending support for contactless mobile payments made using Mir cards issued by Russia’s National Payment Card System (NSPK)... More
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) in the US is to expand its fare payments system to enable passengers to pay for their journeys with a contactless credit card, mobile wallet or a digital version of their CharlieCard transit card... More
Apple users in Arizona are the first in the US to be able to add digital versions of their driving licence and state ID documents to Wallet and use them to verify their identity by tapping their iPhone or Apple Watch at selected Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security checkpoints... More
The Bank of International Settlements and the central banks of Australia, Malaysia and Singapore have completed a joint project to develop a shared platform that could facilitate direct cross-border transactions between institutions using different central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)... More
The Metropolitan Transit Authority in Houston, Texas, in the USA is planning to enable passengers on its bus and light rail services to pay their fares with their mobile device as well as with a contactless transit card or via its mobile ticketing app when it upgrades its fare collection system... More
The Bank of Ghana (BOG) is to pilot a two-tier token-based retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) that can be used with either a digital wallet app managed by a financial institution or a physical hardware wallet such as a contactless smart card that can be used offline and by unbanked consumers... More
Apple Pay has launched in Argentina and Peru with support for Mastercard and Visa cards issued by six banks in Argentina and five in Peru. It has confirmed the service is now live in both countries. More
China is to roll out a digital version of its national identity card that residents can store and access on their smartphone across the whole country “this year”, the Chinese premier Li Keqiang has told a press briefing... More
A UK-based consortium is to investigate the use of ultra-low-cost NFC technology to give individual items of reusable plastic packaging a unique digital identity (UDI) in order to track them across each package’s lifecycle, encourage their reuse and enable the development of a scalable packaging-as-a-service infrastructure... More
Citi Commercial Cards is to enable its business customers in more than 40 markets worldwide to digitise their plastic corporate payment card or provision a virtual card into a mobile wallet and use it to make NFC mobile payments... More
Researchers at Zhejiang University in China have developed a method of printing flexible electronic circuits onto textiles and other surfaces using recyclable liquid metal microgel (LMM) ink... More
US President Joe Biden has signed an executive order (EO) “outlining the first ever, whole-of-government approach to addressing the risks and harnessing the potential benefits of digital assets and their underlying policy” including the possible issuance of a US central bank digital currency (CBDC), the White House says... More
The Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) has named the partner organisations that will support the next phase of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) project... More
Diabetes patients in the UK will soon be able to receive smart insulin pens that enable them to self-administer insulin, record dosing information for each injection and communicate data to a smartphone, tablet or other compatible device using NFC... More
Residents of Singapore can now add a digital version of their driving licence to the country’s Singpass app and use it to verify their identity, the classes of vehicles they are certified to drive and updated information about merits or demerits they have accumulated... More
China is to launch trials of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in more cities and regions across the country after rolling out a pilot version of the digital yuan wallet app in January and trialling the CBDC during the Beijing Winter Olympics... More
PARTNER NEWS: A webinar on Tuesday 15 March will explain to device makers and developers how to enable NFC wireless charging in IoT devices, and examine the design requirements... More