What's New in Payments

Saudi Arabia combines NFC, QR and faster payments to speed move to cashless society

ziad-al-yousef

Saudi Payments, Saudi Arabia’s national payments infrastructure operator, is to use a combination of NFC and contactless payments, a new faster payments system and the introduction of a common QR code platform to reduce the use of cash and speed up its move towards a cashless society, managing director Ziad Al Yousef has told NFCW... More


What's New in Payments

European Central Bank switches on low cost instant payments system

ECB goes live with pan-European instant payments — European Central Bank — “Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) uses central bank money to settle payments individually in less than 10 seconds… TIPS means consumers can make retail payments across Europe instantly, 24/7/365… The price per initiated transaction is set at €0.002 (US$0.0023) for the first two years of operation, with no charges for the first ten million payments settled on each TIPS account by the end of 2019.”


What's New in Payments

Hong Kong links QR codes to faster payments to boost mobile wallet adoption

The launch of Faster Payment System (FPS) — Hong Kong Monetary Authority — “The FPS is a unique platform as it supports instant payments in the HKD and the RMB with the use of mobile phone numbers, email addresses or QR codes… A free mobile application tool, namely ‘Hong Kong Common QR Code’ (HKQR), is released today, which can be used for converting multiple QR codes from different payment service providers into a single, combined QR code. This would facilitate merchants, especially small and medium enterprises, in using a single QR code to accept different payment schemes, instead of displaying multiple QR codes to their customers.”