Aeon to use facial recognition at 80 China self-serve stores — Nikkei Asian Review — “Aeon, Japan’s largest retailer by sales, will soon debut a chain of self-serve smart stores in China that can anticipate what a customer will buy upon entering the establishment… Facial recognition technology installed in the stores will identify shoppers. Customers’ smartphones will then display recommended items and coupons based on purchasing habits and digital payment history.”
Personalisation
NXP showcases the future of retail at CES 2019
PARTNER NEWS: NXP is showing off its vision of the future of retail at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with an unmanned store exhibit that demonstrates new interactive and personalised shopping experiences. More
Tappy adds biometric security to wearable payments devices
Wearable payments specialist Tappy Technologies has unveiled a new watch strap design that combines its existing contactless payments module with a passive fingerprint sensor that can be used to increase the security and transaction limit of wearable contactless payments... More
ST unveils turnkey payment solution for smartwatches and wearables
PARTNER NEWS: STMicroelectronics has partnered with wearable transactions specialist Fidesmo to provide smartwatch and wearable device makers with a single payment system-on-chip (SoC) solution that comes with built-in support for Mastercard payments... More
Chatbots to issue over 1bn coupons a year by 2022
Digital coupon redemptions to surpass $90bn by 2022 — Juniper Research — “Juniper has quantified the volume of chatbot coupons as 25m this year, with this set to reach 1.1bn by 2022. The technology will enable greater personalisation of offers; particularly through use via social media, and at a fraction of the cost of using human operatives, and will aid in driving commerce transactions both online and in-store… Mobile will account for nearly 80% of all coupon redemptions by 2022.”
Amex applies for personalized blockchain rewards patent
American Express eyes blockchain for customer rewards systems — CoinDesk — “A new patent application published last week by the US Patent and Trademark Office details a concept for offering customer-specific types of rewards (including points, a virtual currency or specific items tied to a product). The filing indicates the financial giant would make these offers by compiling personalized data about the customer, such as their historic spending patterns.”
Premier Food Service adds rewards to contactless vending machines
Premier Food Service selects USA Technologies as a strategic partner as they move toward connecting 100% of their machines to cashless payment — USA Technologies — PARTNER NEWS — “‘As personalization becomes more common in the marketplace, we wanted to be one step ahead of the trend with customer loyalty and reward programs being at the center of our go-to-market strategy,’ said Gary Kurth, chief operations officer, Premier Food Service… ‘USAT has made it easy for companies like ours to quickly deploy innovative cashless payment technologies across our business so that we can better engage consumers at the point-of-sale and build in customer loyalty programs.’”
Vehicle recognition used in ad campaign
Vehicle recognition is being used to deliver advertisements for luxury holidays in Bermuda to London drivers with high-value cars... More
MasterCard and Samsung enable grocery payments at the fridge
US consumers will soon be able to place grocery orders with online grocer FreshDirect and supermarket chain ShopRite by entering the items they wish to purchase into a touchscreen built into Samsung’s new Family Hub refrigerator. More
US startup raises funds for NFC necklace
A US startup is raising funds on Kickstarter for its first production run of Lockett, a customisable necklace that can be tapped with an NFC phone to retrieve personal photos, videos and messages... More
Rabobank launches embedded NFC payments service
Customers of Dutch financial institution Rabobank with a Samsung Galaxy S4 or Galaxy Note 3 can now use a mobile wallet app that works with the secure element embedded in their mobile device to make NFC payments, check balances, store loyalty cards and redeem vouchers... More
GE lets retailers send offers to shoppers via LED lighting
GE Lighting and US startup Bytelight have unveiled a marketing platform that lets merchants use LED lighting installed in and around their stores to send offers, directions to particular products and information services to shoppers, based on their precise location within a retail store... More
Yapital expands mobile payments to advertising media
Retailer-owned mobile payments provider Yapital is to add “one click” purchases from printed advertising media to its app, enabling shoppers to order and pay for promoted products by scanning QR codes in merchants’ billboard and newspaper ads, flyers and shop window decals... More
CaixaBank integrates bank accounts with Facebook
Spain’s CaixaBank has become the first bank in Europe to launch a Facebook application that allows users to view their bank accounts and perform transactions via the social network... More
Banco Santander provides students with NFC microSDs
A mobile campus card service that uses NFC built into microSD cards is now live at a “number of universities”, enabling students to use their mobile phone to make payments in canteens and to access buildings... More
Carta adds HCE to mobile payments platform
Transaction technology provider Carta Worldwide has added support for host card emulation (HCE) to its mobile payments platform — and is currently “supporting market trials in Europe and North America” that are expected to lead to large scale HCE deployments in late 2014... More
CaixaBank picks Morpho TSM
Spain’s CaixaBank has chosen Morpho as its trusted service manager (TSM) for the rollout of the largest commercial NFC mobile payment deployment in Europe to date in terms of customer coverage and number of contactless payments... More
Placard picks Bell for NFC
Australian card manufacturer Placard has chosen Bell ID’s trusted service manager solution to enable it to personalise and securely provision NFC applications for its customer base over the air... More
Russian supermarket tests NFC for personalised shopping and loyalty
Russian premium supermarket chain Land is piloting personalised NFC shopping using technology developed by Synqera, which combines ‘Loyalty Generator’ coupon dispensers at the front of the store and NFC-enabled Simplate payment devices at the checkout. More
OTI gets MasterCard approval for Wave NFC add-on
Contactless technology specialist On Track Innovations (OTI) has received MasterCard Mobile PayPass certification for Wave Dongle, an add-on that plugs into the audio jack of a standard mobile device to provide users with NFC payments capabilities... More