The Bank of England and UK Treasury have launched a consultation on the design of the proposed digital pound and could roll out the central bank digital currency (CBDC) during the second half of the decade, according to bank and government officials... More
India’s ICICI, IDFC First and Kotak Mahindra banks have begun enabling selected merchants to accept contactless in-store payments made using the retail version of the prototype digital rupee as part of the first phase of the Reserve Bank of India’s retail central bank digital currency pilot... More
The number of credit cards issued via digital card issuance platforms worldwide will rise from 120m in 2023 to more than 320m by 2027, according to a Juniper Research forecast... More
More than 50% of all payments made with physical or digital payment cards issued to customers of South Africa’s First National Bank (FNB) are now contactless, the bank reports... More
The Central Bank of Bangladesh is trialling an interoperable payments system that will enable customers of more than 15 major banks and payment service providers to pay for their purchases by scanning a standardized QR code at a participating merchant’s point of sale with their smartphone... More
Samsung Wallet will soon go live in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, enabling users to store and use digital payment, loyalty, membership and identity cards, digital keys, boarding passes and other credentials on their compatible Samsung Galaxy smartphone... More
Passengers travelling on buses, electric buses and trolley buses in Prague in the Czech Republic can now use their physical or digital debit or credit card to purchase tickets for their journeys from onboard contactless self-service terminals rather than in advance or from the driver... More
Passengers travelling on train services operated by JR West between two railway stations in the Japanese city of Osaka will soon be able to test a contactless biometric ticketing system that enables them to pay for their fares with their face... More
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has added a function to its digital yuan payment app that allows users to continue to make offline payments using the central bank digital currency (CBDC) from their Android NFC smartphone even if their device has no power... More
More than six in ten card payments made at the point of sale (POS) across European countries within the eurozone are now contactless (62%) compared with just over four in ten in 2019 (41%), a European Central Bank (ECB) survey reveals... More
Passengers travelling on buses, trams, water buses and ferries in the Italian city of Venice will soon be able to make contactless fare payments with their credit or debit card or from a digital wallet on their NFC smartphone or smartwatch... More
The ECB has laid out a series of design and distribution options for a digital euro that describe how the Eurosystem and supervised intermediaries such as commercial banks would operate in order to issue, distribute and settle transactions made using the proposed central bank digital currency. More
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is restricting the amount of cash that consumers and businesses can withdraw from ATMs to 20,000 naira (US$45) per day and 100,000 naira (US$225) per week... More
Passengers who use a wheelchair travelling on services operated by Osaka Metro in Japan are the first to trial a biometric contactless fare payment system that enables them to pay by passing through a wheelchair-accessible ticket gate equipped with face recognition technology... More
Football fans attending the FIFA World Cup in Qatar will be able to authenticate payments for purchases at three coffee outlets with their face, using biometric technology being piloted by Visa and Qatar National Bank... More
Fitbit users are now able to add Google Wallet to Sense 2 and Versa 4 smartwatches and then use their wearable to make contactless payments in 45 countries, including 7 of the 12 countries where Google Wallet is now available for the first time... More
Samsung Wallet has gone live in Qatar and South Africa, enabling users to store and use their digital payment, loyalty, membership and identity cards, digital keys, boarding passes and other credentials on their compatible Samsung Galaxy smartphone... More
PARTNER NEWS: Italian cash register provider RCH has partnered with digital payments technology provider Dejamobile and international payments platform Market Pay to provide its customers with the ability to accept contactless payments on Android NFC devices... More
Turkey is planning to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that will be integrated with the country’s digital identity system and the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey’s FAST instant payments service... More
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has unveiled a prototype two-tier central bank digital currency (CBDC) ecosystem that will enable end users to store digital HK dollars as either intermediated CBDC tokens or CBDC-backed stablecoins in a digital wallet and use them to carry out retail transactions... More