The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) in the USA is to implement a “next generation” account-based ticketing system that will support both open and closed loop contactless fare payments, mobile ticketing, flexible fare structures and fare capping across its public transportation networks... More
Apple users in Japan will soon be able to store and top up a digital version of rail operator JR West’s ICOCA prepaid contactless transit card in Apple Wallet and use it to pay their fares for bus and rail journeys with a tap of their iPhone or Apple Watch... More
Freight brokers in the US can now transfer advance payments for fuel to carriers and their drivers using a mobile wallet app that allows drivers to make contactless fuel payments from their smartphone... More
Merchants in Taiwan have become the first outside the USA to be able to accept in-store contactless payments on iPhones using Apple’s Tap to Pay software point of sale (sPOS) feature... More
Students attending Purdue University in West Lafayette in the US state of Indiana can now access campus buildings and authorise on-campus payments using a digital student identity card stored on their Apple or Android NFC smartphone or smartwatch rather than a physical ID card... More
The European Credit Sector Associations (ECSAs) are calling on the European Union to re-examine clauses in legislation on the proposed European Digital Identity Wallet that appear to imply that “widely used cards and payment specifications” will have to accept the wallet for strong customer authentication (SCA) for payments “on a mandatory basis”... More
Lithuanian supermarket chain IKI has opened its second contactless convenience store in the capital Vilnius, enabling customers to check in at the store door by tapping their payment card, mobile wallet or retailer’s app, select the products they want and pay for their purchases without needing to scan them, by tapping their payment card as they leave... More
Merchants in South Korea can now opt to accept Apple Pay payments on their smartphone without needing to purchase and install NFC readers at the point of sale as a number of new or upgraded software POS solutions roll out across the country... More
The World Expo 2025 in the Japanese city of Osaka will be the first world’s fair to be entirely cashless and is developing a dedicated blockchain-enabled Expo Digital Wallet that visitors will be able to use to make contactless payments with their smartphone both inside and outside the venue as well as after the event... More
Passengers on buses in North Wales can now make contactless fare payments on services run by 25 different local operators with their debit or credit card using an interoperable fare-capped ticketing system rolled out across nearly 200 routes in the region... More
Residents of Singapore and Malaysia can now make contactless QR code-based payments for goods and payments in either country using an interoperable cross-border payments system launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM)... More
The number of payment cards issued via digital card issuance platforms worldwide will increase from 500m in 2023 to more than 1.3bn by 2027, according to a Juniper Research forecast... More
The proposed retail digital euro should be appropriately designed in collaboration with the private sector, create value for end-users, preserve financial stability and incentivise and enable private sector intermediaries to add solutions and services within the central bank digital currency (CBDC) ecosystem, according to a European Banking Federation (EBF) vision paper... More
Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) is to integrate its TransitLink and EZ-Link ticketing and travel card services in order to “simplify and streamline the ticketing experience” and enable transit users to access “a range of ticketing and card-related services through a single interface”... More
Google Wallet has launched in Japan, enabling users to store and use their credit, debit, transit and loyalty cards, boarding passes, tickets and other digital credentials on their Android NFC smartphone or Wear OS smartwatch... More
Samsung and Naver Financial have launched an integrated mobile payments service in South Korea that enables Naver Pay users to make in-store payments with their smartphone at outlets accepting Samsung Pay and Samsung Pay users to make online payments at ecommerce merchants supporting Naver Pay... More
Passengers travelling on services operated by Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) will soon be able to make contactless fare payments with their physical or digital credit card as well as an Octopus transit card or a digital QR code ticket on their smartphone... More
Passengers using rapid transit services operated by Kochi Metro in the Indian state of Kerala will soon be able to make contactless parking payments with the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) as part of a digital rupee pilot programme launched by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)... More
More than eight in ten consumers in Singapore now use contactless cards (82%) and the widespread use of and preference for contactless card payments is one of the key drivers behind the country’s “shift towards becoming a cashless nation”, according to a Visa report... More
Consumers in Italy used their smartphones or wearable devices to make in-store contactless payments worth a total of €16.3bn (US$17.5bn) in 2022, an increase of 122% compared with 2021, according to the Innovative Payments Observatory (IPO) at Milan Polytechnic University... More