Customers at Gulf Oil fuel stations across select New England and New York markets in the US are to pilot a new mobile payment service that will enable drivers to navigate to the nearest station, pay for fuel at the pump, receive exclusive offers and purchase products inside the convenience store... More
Pilot
Smart Benches offer Londoners chance to make contactless charity donations
Ten Smart Benches have been installed across London to enable passersby to donate £2 (US$3) to Cancer Research UK with a tap of their contactless debit or credit card. The Smart Bench network is currently being piloted in two boroughs in the city, with a further 90 benches to be permanently rolled out later this year. More
Australian festival goers trial contactless sunglasses for payments
Festival goers at the St Jerome’s Laneway Festival taking place across five Australian cities are trialling prototype sunglasses that let them make contactless payments by tapping them against a contactless POS terminal... More
Bluetooth bus ticketing trial lets passengers travel without buying a ticket
Bus passengers in northern England are trialling a mobile ticketing system that works with Bluetooth beacons placed on buses and at bus stops, and a smartphone app that tracks the user’s journey and then charges them the best-value price over the course of a day or week... More
Google to shut down Hands Free mobile payments pilot
Google is ending its Hands Free mobile payments pilot in one week’s time in order to focus its efforts on “bringing the best of the Hands Free technology to a wider audience,” according to the company... More
Scottish commuters to pilot HCE ticketing across subway system
PARTNER NEWS: Commuters across western Scotland are to begin testing a host card emulation (HCE) based ticketing service in the second quarter of 2017, that will enable them to securely load a virtual smart card to their mobile phone and pay for journeys across the Glasgow Subway with a tap of their NFC device... More
Mobile marketplace offers African farmers promise of richer, cashless harvest
Thousands of small-scale farmers across East Africa will soon be using their feature phones to buy, sell and receive payments for their goods through a mobile app and SMS service developed by Mastercard... More
Biometric payments pilot to test palm vein replacement for cards
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) is planning to launch a pilot in the first half of 2017 that will allow consumers to make payments at the point of sale using palm vein authentication technology, without the need of a physical payment card... More
Korean central bank to put small change on cards
The Bank of Korea (BOK) is to pilot a service that allows merchants to give customers change in the form of a top-up onto a prepaid card instead of coins... More
German MNO begins SIM-based NFC mobile payments pilot
Vodafone Germany customers are testing NFC mobile payments using their Girocard — the most common debit card in the country — through Vodafone Wallet... More
McDonald’s South Africa pilots QR code mobile payments with WeChat
McDonald’s South Africa is piloting a mobile payment service at select restaurants in Johannesburg and Cape Town using social messaging app WeChat Africa, enabling customers to complete purchases by presenting QR codes generated by the app at the point of sale... More
DigiTally project enables mobile money transfers without network coverage
A project enabling mobile money transfers to take place at the point of sale in areas of less-developed countries with poor or no mobile network coverage has been unveiled, by removing the reliance on SMS messaging, and, instead, allowing two people to conduct a payment by copying short authentication codes between their phones... More
InComm to pilot dynamic CVV codes
Prepaid card provider InComm is to pilot a real-time authentication solution that will allow its cardholders to complete transactions using dynamic CVV codes that replace the static CVV codes printed on the back of cards... More
Abu Dhabi schools in talks to pilot BLE school bus project
UAE-based startup Smart Navigation Systems (SNS) is in talks with “several schools” in Abu Dhabi to begin piloting School Bus Application, a service that notifies parents of the safety of their children when travelling to school using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons on buses... More
OCBC bank in local and cross-border blockchain payments trial
Singapore’s OCBC Bank says it has become the first bank in South East Asia to use blockchain technology in national and international payments... More
Poppy Appeal gets contactless donations
UK consumers can make a donation to The Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal by tapping their contactless card or NFC device against contactless donation tins in 13 branches of UK bank Natwest... More
Ecobank to roll out mVisa in 33 African markets
Pan-African banking group Ecobank has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Visa to roll out the mVisa QR code-based mobile payment service in 33 African markets by the end of 2016... More
Mastercard distributes digital humanitarian funds
Mastercard has launched a pilot program with the American Red Cross to use Mastercard Send to distribute funds to families in Indonesia via their mobile phones to buy water and other items during the drought season... More
School children test wearable payments in Singapore
Singapore bank POSB has successfully completed the pilot test of a school contactless payments system that lets students make purchases in the canteen or bookstore and monitor their finances... More
Visa works on blockchain B2B payment system
Visa says it is working with blockchain developer Chain to develop a near real-time transaction system for high-value international payments between participating banks... More