An international consortium of 148 public and private sector organisations from 19 European Union member states and Ukraine is to develop and test digital identity prototypes across six use cases including digital driving licences and medical prescriptions as part of the EU’s large-scale European Digital Identity Wallet pilot programme... More
Pilot
Vancouver pilots wayfinding app for visually impaired transit users
Visually impaired public transportation users in Vancouver in Canada can now receive both audio instructions that guide them to bus pick-up points and real-time transit information by scanning codes at bus bays and stops with their Apple or Android smartphone... More
JR West to trial contactless biometric fare payments at stations in Osaka
Passengers travelling on train services operated by JR West between two railway stations in the Japanese city of Osaka will soon be able to test a contactless biometric ticketing system that enables them to pay for their fares with their face... More
California to roll out digital driving licences that users can store on their mobile phone
The US state of California is planning to launch a digital driving licence that users will be able to store in a digital wallet on their smartphone, the state governor Gavin Newsom has revealed... More
EU to begin large-scale European Digital Identity Wallet pilots for multiple use cases
The European Commission has selected four proposals for large-scale pilot programmes to test the European Digital Identity Wallet across multiple use cases, including in-store, online and cross-border payments, travel, ecommerce, access to services and credential verification... More
SEPTA pilots mobile ticketing in Philadelphia and reveals plans to roll out open loop contactless fare payments
Passengers travelling on bus, trolley and rapid transit lines in the US city of Philadelphia can now purchase, store and activate QR code tickets for up to five people travelling the same route on their Apple or Android smartphone... More
Tampa to pilot Mobility-as-a-Service app for multimodal journey planning and contactless mobile ticketing
The city of Tampa in Florida in the USA is to pilot a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) app that will enable participants to plan multimodal journeys using both public and private transportation and purchase and store digital transit tickets and passes on their mobile device... More
India pilots digital rupee for contactless in-store and P2P payments
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is this week launching a pilot scheme in four Indian cities to test the retail version of its prototype central bank digital currency (CBDC) for both in-store and peer-to-peer transactions, the central bank says... More
Apple Pay to start pilot rollout in South Korea
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
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
Bank of Korea reports slow transaction processing times in DLT digital currency pilot
The Bank of Korea (BOK) is to review additional central bank digital currency (CBDC) design options after its 10-month experiment to test a retail CBDC based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) revealed “limitations of scalability” such as slow processing times during periods of high transaction volume when compared with a more conventional centralised ledger database, the bank says... More
EU targets 2024 for European Digital Identity Wallet launch
The European Union is preparing to go live with its European Digital Identity Wallet in 2024, enabling all EU citizens to store digital identity credentials including their national ID, driving licence, and qualification and bank account details, according to EU sources... More
India to begin digital rupee payments pilot ‘within a month’
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has begun testing a prototype wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) and will launch a pilot programme for a retail digital rupee with merchants and consumers in select locations “within a month”, the central bank says... More
JCB to pilot central bank digital currency payments on contactless cards
Japan-based payments network JCB is to run an in-store central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot that uses existing contactless payment cards, point of sale (POS) hardware and softPOS payment acceptance technology installed on mobile devices... More
Polish retail chain trials biometric payments
Customers purchasing laptops, tablets, smartphones and accessories from a branch of Polish retail chain Komputronik in the city of Wroclaw can now pay for their purchases using a biometric payments system that uses a combination of iris and face recognition technology... More
People’s Bank of China reports on digital yuan uptake
The digital yuan has been used to make 360m transactions worth a total of more than 100bn yuan (US$14bn) since China began piloting the central bank digital currency (CBDC) in December 2019, up from total cumulative transaction values worth 87.6bn yuan (US$12bn) at the end of 2021, according to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC)... More
France extends public pilot of digital health insurance card
Residents of eight French departments will soon be able to verify their identity when accessing healthcare services and claim reimbursement for medical fees by scanning a digital version of their Carte Vitale health insurance card stored on their smartphone with an NFC reader or presenting a QR code to service providers... More
India to pilot digital rupee for payments in stores
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is to build a prototype digital rupee and test it in a range of scenarios and use cases as part of its “phased implementation strategy” for introducing a central bank digital currency (CBDC)... More
BP and MAN to pilot in-vehicle contactless payments for truck drivers
Petrol retailer BP and truck and bus manufacturer MAN are teaming up to pilot in-vehicle contactless payments at fuel stations across the UK... More
Consortium proposes European Digital Identity Wallet payments pilot
A consortium of government agencies, financial institutions, payments networks and technology providers from Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia and Norway is proposing to launch a large-scale payments pilot to explore how the European Digital Identity Wallet being developed by the European Commission would support cross-border transactions... More