More than nine in ten public transport users worldwide expect to be able to make contactless fare payments when travelling on public transport (94%) and more than four in ten identify the ability to make contactless fare payments as a key factor in encouraging their use of public transportation (41%), according to Visa’s 2023 Future of Urban Mobility survey... More
Russia could start testing the use of the digital ruble in real-world transactions as early as this month following the adoption of a law that ratifies the issuance and use of the central bank digital currency (CBDC) using a platform operated by the Central Bank of Russia... More
Visitors to China can now link their international credit cards, including cards issued by Visa, Mastercard, JCB and Discover, to an Alipay or WeChat Pay digital wallet and use them to make payments for goods and services at merchants across the country... More
Passengers on New York’s subway and bus services have now tapped their contactless bank or transit card, smartphone or wearable device to pay fares using the Omny open loop fare payment system more than 1bn times since it launched in May 2019, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) reports... More
LA Metro in the US city of Los Angeles has added support for fare capping to its TAP transit ticketing system so passengers making contactless fare payments with their physical TAP transit card or mobile app pay no more than the price of a daily or weekly pass no matter how many journeys they make on any given day or in any seven-day period... More
Apple Pay has launched in Morocco with support for debit and credit cards issued by Crédit Immobilier et Hôtelier (CIH) and Groupe Crédit Agricole du Maroc banks... More
Students with Galaxy smartphones at 68 colleges, universities and higher education institutions across the USA can now add a digital version of their student identity card to Samsung Wallet and use it to access campus buildings and to make contactless onsite purchases... More
One in four central banks are now piloting a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) that consumers would be able to use to make payments, a survey of central banks around the world conducted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has found... More
Merchants in the UK can now use their Apple iPhone to accept contactless payments, with no additional hardware required, Apple has announced... More
Chinese banks have joined a government initiative to add support for payments made using China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) to physical state-issued social security cards, according to local media reports... More
Public transportation users in the Chinese city of Jinan can now use the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) to pay their fares on any of the area’s buses... More
Public transportation users in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon can now pay for the journeys they make on the city’s metro system with a standard contactless bank card, NFC mobile phone or smartwatch. ... More
The NFC Forum has officially announced its technology roadmap for the next five years, including the addition of support for multiple purpose tags, an increase in range for NFC transactions, a modernisation of device-to-device communication, expanded data sharing options and increased power for wireless charging. More
Passengers using Qingdao Metro’s line 4 can now use their NFC mobile phone to pay directly for their fares with China’s digital yuan central bank digital currency (CBDC), even if their mobile phone has no signal or has run out of battery... More
More than a quarter of the 193,000 self-checkout systems shipped to merchants around the world in 2022 were installed in non-grocery stores “as the technology penetrates new segments”, research firm RBR has found. ... More
Public transportation users in Auckland, New Zealand, will be able to pay their bus, train and ferry fares using a contactless debit/credit card, Apple Pay or Google Pay “within the next 12 months”, the city’s transport authority has announced. ... More
LVMH Group is to equip staff at its Sephora, Christian Dior Couture, Celine, Tiffany & Co and Louis Vuitton stores in the US with iPhones that use Apple’s Tap to Pay softPOS solution from “later this year”. More
EMV payments grew by more than 350% as a share of cashless sales at food and beverage vending machines in the US and Canada in 2022, an analysis of a sample set of almost 675,000 active card readers has found. ... More
Public transportation users in the Netherlands can now make use of a single, national, integrated contactless ticketing system to pay for their train, bus, tram and metro fares throughout the country, with no need to pre-purchase a ticket or top up a travel card... More
Google Wallet is now available in Argentina, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Montenegro, bringing the total number of countries where the digital wallet is available to 66. More