Six Dutch banks including ABN Amro, ASN Bank, ING, Rabobank, Regiobank and SNS have announced their intention to launch Payconiq in the Netherlands this summer. Payconiq is a common mobile payment platform that lets customers make P2P payments as well as pay in-store and online and has been successfully piloted and launched in Belgium with support from ING, KBC and Belfius banks. More
PARTNER NEWS: Guala Closures Group, a world leader in security closures, has teamed up with NXP to introduce an NFC-based tamper evident closure solution for the wine and spirits industry that is designed to protect brands, enable advanced anti-counterfeiting and tamper-proofing and enable brand owners to make VIP offers, loyalty rewards and more available to customers through a tap of their NFC mobile device. More
Employees at Pick n Pay supermarket stores and Absa Bank staff across South Africa have been trialling a biometric card developed by Mastercard that lets them make a payment at any EMV terminal and authenticate the transaction by placing their finger on the embedded sensor. Additional trials are planned over the next few months, with a full roll out expected “later this year”. More
Rapid innovation in the payments market resulting from the emergence of end-user device adoption and tokenization is leading to commerce experiences that are more seamless in nature and more convenient for the end user — but with such rapid change comes a need for a look in the mirror, says Pizza Hut’s director of digital ventures. More
Subway, FreshDirect and The Cheesecake Factory have begun rolling out payment bots for Facebook Messenger across the US, allowing their customers to secure and complete payments using Mastercard’s Masterpass digital payment platform without having to leave the instant messaging service. More
Customers of Lloyds Banking Group across the UK will soon be able to log into their online banking accounts using fingerprint or facial recognition through Microsoft’s Windows Hello biometric authentication technology. The banking group is to trial the solution with Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers with Windows 10 devices in the second half of this year. More
Android Pay has been integrated into the mobile banking apps of “several banks around the world” so that users can add their cards to the mobile payment service with “just the click of a button”. The feature will also work for those who have not installed Android Pay on their handset, giving them access to “the capabilities of Android Pay” without having to leave their mobile banking app. More
Visa is to bring all of its contactless transactions online this year across 10 European countries to give consumers “more control over their accounts” following calls from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for banks to tighten the processes they undergo when a customer reports a stolen contactless card. American Express is also “reviewing options” to ensure those who cancel their cards are protected against contactless fraud. More
Facebook Messenger users across the US can now send and receive money between groups of people in a Messenger conversation by selecting the payments icon and then choosing who to send or request money from using a list of conversation participants. More
The number of consumers using OEM Pays — mobile payment services delivered by handset manufacturers — such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay will exceed 100m for the first time during the first half of 2017 and is expected to surpass 150m by the end of the year, Juniper Research reveals, while host card emulation (HCE) adoption is set to rise five-fold over the next four years. More
Mobile payments are the best example of how technology can add value to traditional banking services, says CaixaBank Payments’ head of mobile — and benefits will come not only in the form of increased revenues but also in the form of improved customer satisfaction, reputation and loyalty. More
Facebook Messenger users across the US are now being prompted to send and request money transfers by an artificial intelligence-based feature that detects when a payment is being discussed in a conversation on the social media platform and responds with a suggestion designed to help the user complete that payment. More
Consumers across the United Arab Emirates will soon be able to make payments across a “variety of services” using their mobile phone and Empay, a common mobile payment platform based on NFC. The solution forms part of Dubai’s Smart Government Initiative which aims to transform Dubai into the world’s smartest city. More
Consumers can now be offered the chance to win prizes related to the purchases they make both in-store and online by playing games such as scratch cards and slot machines that are integrated into a merchant’s payment confirmation pages online and at the payment terminal in a store. More
The global number of NFC SIM card shipments decreased in 2016 due in part to a “lower than anticipated” consumer uptake of SIM-based mobile payments and the impact of the closure of the Softcard mobile wallet in the US, the SIMalliance has revealed, despite reporting growth in NFC SIM shipments in key countries across Europe and the CIS regions, highlighting the demand in specific markets. More
Having information about how, when and why consumers seek to contact organisations through digital assistants and chatbots and understanding why they are gravitating towards doing so is critical to achieving the full potential of conversational commerce, according to Barclaycard’s managing director of future payments Nick Kerigan and director of future payments Sanjaya Shrestha. More
Amazon customers across the US can now top up their Amazon balance using cash at “thousands of participating convenience, grocery and drug stores” by showing a printed barcode or a barcode on their mobile device to the cashier. They will then be able to use the funds to make online purchases at Amazon. More
The group of Australian banks seeking stronger negotiating powers with Apple over the NFC technology within its iPhone handsets have been denied access to it by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on the grounds that the proposed conduct would “reduce or distort competition in a number of markets” and that the benefits are “outweighed by the detriments”. More
Samsung Pay will be available for online payments at “hundreds of thousands of merchants around the world” where Visa Checkout is accepted later this year. The news follows an announcement by the company’s Justin Denison at Samsung Unpacked 2017 last week that the service was heading online through “strategic partnerships”. More
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has set out measures it plans to tighten the processes banks undergo when a customer reports a stolen contactless card, which currently allow — in a “limited set of circumstances” — for a stolen card to be misused by fraudsters “several months after it has been cancelled”. More