Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom has now signed up 122,000 merchants for Lipa na M-Pesa, a service launched in June 2013 that enables Kenyan consumers to use the funds stored in their M-Pesa mobile money account to pay for goods in stores. More
- Eventbrite brings tap to pay to the events industry
- Biometric card pioneer backs away from payments citing lower-than-expected market uptake
- EU calls for feedback on proposed settlement with Apple over NFC chip access
- Google signs deal to take UPI beyond India
- NFC Forum spells out DPP ambitions in ebook
Square’s finances revealed
Mobile point-of-sale provider Square lost US$100m in 2013 but is making a 34% gross margin on its processing business, according to leaked internal documents seen by Fortune... More
mPOS use to soar
The number of installed mobile point-of-sale devices is set to grow fivefold to reach 51m by 2019, or 46% of the overall POS market, ABI Research says... More
OpenTable adds Glass bookings
Restaurant booking service OpenTable has introduced a Google Glass version of its app... More
Google Play adds PayPal
Google Play users in 12 countries can now charge the cost of their purchases to their PayPal account... More
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SMEs ready to embrace mPOS
The use of mobile point-of-sale solutions by small businesses in Europe will take off dramatically in 2014, according to a survey of 2,000 SMEs commissioned by Visa Europe... More
White paper sets out benefits of white label mobile payments
“Building a Foundation for Mobile Payment”, a white paper from Datacard, explains why banks and other card issuers must advance their mobile payments strategy quickly and demonstrates the benefits of taking a white-label approach to mobile payment platforms. More
Polish ATMs get biometrics
Poland’s Planet Cash shared ATM network is to allow users to withdraw cash with finger vein biometrics, network operator ITCard has announced... More
SF Soup to add iBeacons
San Francisco Soup Company, operator of 17 soup, salad and sandwich restaurants around the Bay Area, has selected mobile solutions provider Punchh to create a customised mobile guest rewards program... More
TD Canada Trust launches NFC mobile payments with support from all three major carriers
TD Canada Trust, the retail banking arm of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, has become the first in Canada to offer an NFC mobile payment solution that is supported by the country’s three major wireless networks: Bell, Rogers and Telus. More
Dauntless sets out to track world’s food supply with NFC
A US startup is seeking funds for a service that tracks produce all the way from farm to supermarket shelf, ultimately letting consumers tap a tag on a bag of coffee to see the farm on which it was grown and trace its journey. More
Isis reports 20,000 new mobile wallet users a day
Isis saw its user adoption growth rate double last month and is now adding an average of 20,000 new users a day, Michael Abbott, CEO of the US carrier-led NFC venture, has revealed. More
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RenRen lets social media users make friends with animated QR codes
Chinese social media site RenRen is giving users the ability to create a personal, animated QR code for their profile page, which they can use to let contacts add them quickly to their friends list. More
Bank sends money to Facebook friends
Customers of Singapore’s OCBC Bank can now send up to S$100 a day to any of their Facebook friends from their phone, using a new Pay Anyone feature in the bank’s mobile app... More
Australian bank tests beacons in branches
St George Bank is testing the use of Bluetooth LE technology to send a welcome message and personalised information directly to a customer’s iPhone when they enter a branch. More
Square uses digital receipts to create conversations between consumers and merchants
Mobile point-of-sale specialist Square has introduced a new service that “turns the receipt into a conversation channel”. More
Square exits mobile wallet business
US mobile payments provider Square is pulling out of the consumer mobile wallet business and its Square Wallet app is no longer available to new customers to download... More
X-Men gets iBeacons promo
Twentieth Century Fox is to use Bluetooth beacons to promote the new X-Men: Days of Future Past movie to cinema-goers in Japan... More
Contactless card shipments double
A total of 450million contactless cards, twice the number produced in 2012, were shipped in 2013 by members of the Smart Payment Association, a group that accounts for 85% of the market... More
Bertolli runs NFC marketing campaign in US stores
Bertolli Olive Oil is to use News America Marketing and Thinaire‘s SmartSource with NFC service to deliver recipes, videos and ingredients lists to shoppers while they are in the relevant aisle of a supermarket. More