Android Pay has signed up “millions” of users since its launch in the US in September 2015, Google’s Sridhar Ramaswamy has told attendees during his keynote at Money20/20. He also announced that single tap loyalty rewards are set to go live at NFC-enabled Coke vending machines in the next “few weeks”. More
The total value of mobile payment transactions in the US will grow 210% in 2016 and nearly one in five smartphone users will make a mobile payment in a store next year, eMarketer’s latest proximity mobile payments forecast predicts. More
Samsung is to run a seven city tour to promote the launch of Samsung Pay in the US... More
Grupo Aval, Colombia’s largest financial services group, has launched a mobile payment and offers service that lets customers of its Av Villas, Banco de Bogotá, Banco de Occidente and Banco Popular banks make in-store payments using a code generated on their mobile phone... More
US retailer-led consortium MCX has announced a partnership with promotions management and processing provider Inmar to bring digital promotions from US brands to its yet-to-launch mobile wallet platform CurrentC... More
Hong Kong mobile network operator SmarTone has unveiled Kissco, an end-to-end mobile marketing platform incorporating Kiss Pay, a mobile payments service based on NFC and ultrasound technology, a Kiss Dollars loyalty program and Kiss Beacons to allow retailers to send out offers and promotions directly to customers’ smartphones from their stores... More
Supermarket giant Carrefour has installed 600 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons in its 28 hypermarkets in Romania to guide shoppers around the stores and to deliver personalised promotions and offers either directly to their smartphones or to Samsung tablets affixed to the handles of their shopping carts. More
Visitors to the 2015 MLB All-Star Game festivities in Cincinnati have the chance to win a Priceless Surprise when using Apple Pay for purchases... More
CU Wallet, a mobile payments platform developed for US credit unions, is to integrate merchant offers and promotions through a partnership with Relevant Solutions... More
More than 400,000 viewers of France’s largest television shopping network will soon be able to buy products featured on the TV channel by holding up their smartphone to the screen to scan audio tags that will then redirect them to the item’s online page where they can make a purchase using their stored payment information... More
Some 14% of Canadian consumers say they are highly interested in making in-store mobile payments and 11% are also interested in using a wearable device such as a smartwatch to do so, research from payment services supplier Tsys has revealed... More
Nearly 5,000 KFC China fast food restaurants will accept Alipay mobile payments next month, following in the footsteps of Walmart which is rolling out support for the service in all of its Chinese stores by the end of this year... More
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Alipay parent Ant Financial have each invested RMB3bn (US$483m) into Koubei, a joint venture that will let consumers order and pay for local services in China using their smartphone, “with an initial focus on the food and beverage segment”... More
Barclays customers can upgrade the size of their Starbucks coffee for free at participating locations in the UK when using their contactless card to pay until the end of June... More
Jamba Juice and restaurant data analytics provider Fishbowl have worked together to integrate Fishbowl’s Promotion Manager software into Android Pay, allowing guests to “save and use promotions while merchants will be able to process redemptions in real time,” the companies say... More
Consumer financial services provider Synchrony Financial will offer private label credit cardholders the ability to add their cards to Apple Pay, starting with retail partner JCPenney... More
French supermarket giant Carrefour is piloting an LED in-store lighting system in its Lille hypermarket that sends location-based services, offers and promotions to a shopper’s smartphone anywhere across the 7,800 square metre shop floor... More
Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has launched a platform for brands and product manufacturers that will enable them to place “dotless visual codes” on product packaging so that consumers can scan to check a product’s authenticity and get information, discounts and recommendations based on their preferences... More
Visitors to Zoom Torino Biopark in Cumiana, Italy will be able to unlock information and rewards on their smartphones thanks to a network of Bluetooth Low Energy beacons that send location-based messages to their devices... More
The largest NFC mobile payment initiative in Germany to date has launched in the capital Berlin, as the country’s three mobile network operators, Vodafone Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica, team up with six major retail groups to update more than 2,000 point-of-sale terminals to support NFC payments in nearly 500 stores... More