Apple Pay will begin a limited pilot rollout in South Korea this week, initially for online payments and with offline payments to follow, according to advertisements seen in the capital Seoul and reported by local media outlets... More
Mobile wallet
Apply now to speak at NFCW’s Contactless Payments Summit
NFCW will be bringing together senior executives and technical specialists from across the contactless payments ecosystem on 24-26 January for the Contactless Payments Summit, part of our Contactless World Congress series of online events... More
Google Wallet arrives on Fitbit devices and expands to 12 more countries
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
Spanish banks to pilot digital euro for contactless in-store payments
Some 30 banks and payment services providers in Spain, including BBVA, Banco Sabadell, Banco Santander, ING, Deutsche Bank and Iberpay, have set up a working group to test the use of a digital euro for contactless in-store payments as well as ecommerce transactions and peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers... More
Danske Bank lets Danish consumers add domestic payment cards to Apple Pay
Customers of Danske Bank in Denmark can now add their Dankort debit card to Apple Pay and use it to make mobile payments using the country’s Dankort domestic payment system... More
Samsung Wallet to expand to 13 more countries
Samsung Wallet is to roll out in Bahrain, Denmark, Finland, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Norway, Oman, Qatar, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates, enabling users to store their digital payment, loyalty, membership and identity cards, digital keys, boarding passes and other credentials on their compatible Samsung Galaxy smartphone... More
EasyCard lets consumers top up their stored value card via NFC
Consumers in Taiwan can now purchase an upgraded version of the EasyCard stored value smart payments and transit card that they can top up directly from their NFC smartphone without needing to use a reload or top-up machine at a metro station or convenience store... More
One in four card payments in Australia are now made using a mobile wallet
A quarter of all debit and credit card transactions made in Australia are now made using a mobile wallet (25%), up from 10% in the March quarter of 2020, according to figures from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). ... More
Juniper forecasts 121bn virtual card transactions by 2027
The integration of virtual cards into digital wallet services like Apple Pay and Google Pay will drive a 340% increase in virtual card transactions, from 28bn in 2022 to 121bn by 2027, Juniper Research predicts... More
Nearly half of UK consumers now make mobile payments every week
More than four in ten UK consumers now make in-person and ecommerce purchases from their mobile device on a weekly basis (43%), making mobile payments “the predominant form of payment” in the country with mobile commerce transaction values predicted to reach £100m (US$112m) by 2024, according to research published by payment services provider Rapyd... More
Linux Foundation launches open source digital wallet project
The Linux Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium that hosts and promotes the development of open source projects including the Linux kernel and Kubernetes, has launched a collaborative effort to develop open source software to support interoperability for a wide range of digital wallet use cases including digital identity and payments. ... More
Finland to pilot digital identity network that lets citizens store credentials in their choice of digital wallet
Finland is to develop and pilot an interoperable digital identity network that will enable users to securely authenticate their identity and share personal data such as professional qualifications across a wide range of use cases using ID documents and credentials stored in a digital wallet... More
Google Wallet expands to six more countries
Google Wallet has gone live in Azerbaijan, Iceland, Moldova, Qatar, Serbia and South Africa, enabling users to store and use their credit and debit cards, tickets, passes and other digital credentials on their Android NFC devices... More
Apple Pay goes live in Qatar
Apple Pay has launched in Qatar with support for American Express cards and Mastercard and Visa cards issued by seven major banks... More
Apple Pay expands to Malaysia
Apple Pay has launched in Malaysia with support for Mastercard and Visa cards issued by AmBank, Maybank and Standard Chartered Bank... More
Huawei Pay goes live in Italy
Customers of Intesa Sanpaolo bank in Italy with a compatible smartphone can now digitise and add their PagoBancomat payment card to a Huawei Pay digital wallet and use it to make in-store NFC mobile payments... More
Global digital wallet spend to exceed US$12tn in 2026
The total value of digital wallet transactions globally will exceed US$12tn in 2026, up from US$7.5tn in 2022, and the total number of digital wallet users worldwide will increase from 3.4 billion in 2022 to more than 5.2 billion in 2026, according to a forecast by Juniper Research... More
NFC Forum reports surge in worldwide use of contactless NFC technology
More than eight in ten consumers have used “an NFC contactless card or mobile payment wallet” (85%) and contactless payment card usage has increased by 30% over the past two years, according to a survey of consumers in nine countries around the world that has been conducted for the NFC Forum... More
More than half a million US students add NFC digital campus card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay
More than 500,000 students at 100 higher education facilities across the USA have now added an NFC-enabled digital campus card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay on their NFC smartphone or smartwatch, according to campus card provider Transact... More
Law firm files class action against Apple on behalf of US payment card issuers over NFC chip access and service fees
US law firm Hagens Berman has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple alleging that, by preventing mobile wallets other than Apple Pay using the NFC chip in iPhone and Apple Watch to enable contactless payments, the company is in breach of federal antitrust law... More