The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is to run a series of pilot schemes to test the use of mobile payments technology to enable citizens entitled to financial support under its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to receive benefits and make NFC or QR code payments for eligible purchases on their mobile device... More
Retail
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
More than 34m merchants worldwide to accept contactless payments on NFC smartphones by 2027
The number of merchants worldwide using software point of sale (sPOS) solutions to accept contactless payments on an ordinary NFC smartphone or tablet will increase from 6m in 2022 to more than 34.5m by 2027, according to Juniper Research... 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
More than 160,000 stores worldwide will support contactless mobile self-scan shopping by 2027
The number of stores worldwide that enable customers to self-scan their purchases on their own smartphone or a device provided by the merchant rose by 10,000 during 2021 to reach a total of 46,000, but that total is set to more than triple and exceed 161,000 globally by 2027, according to Retail Banking Research (RBR)... 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
Football fans trial NFC ‘payment jerseys’ for contactless in-stadium purchases in Mexico
Football fans in Mexico can now make contactless payments from a stored-value digital wallet to buy Corona beer at selected matches at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium using an NFC chip attached to the inside of a soccer jersey... More
Nearly 100m US consumers will be scanning QR codes by 2025
The number of US consumers who use their smartphone to scan QR codes to make contactless payments and for a wide range of other use cases such as scanning codes in print publications, on restaurant menus and in retail outlets will rise from 83.4 million in 2022 to 99.5 million by 2025, according to an Insider Intelligence forecast... 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
Tequila brand extends use of NFC tags for product authentication and customer engagement
US-based tequila brand Otaca is to add NFC tags that enable purchasers to authenticate their purchase, access information about the brand and place further orders by tapping the tag in the bottle cap with their Apple or Android NFC device to more than 50,000 bottles of its Reposado tequila... 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
Aldi trials first contactless store in continental Europe
Supermarket chain Aldi is trialling its first checkout-free contactless store in continental Europe in the Dutch city of Utrecht, enabling customers to enter the store by scanning an app, selecting items from the shelves and then leaving without needing to scan their purchases or use a conventional checkout... More
Central banks in five SE Asian countries to create common contactless QR payments zone
The central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are to develop an interoperable cross-border payments system that will enable residents of each country to use their mobile banking app to make QR code-based payments for goods and services when visiting any of the other territories... More
Festival food cart operator rolls out contactless payments acceptance on standard NFC phones
Food cart service provider FrostHead has provided its sellers at the Lollapalooza outdoor music festival in Sweden with the ability to accept contactless payments for food, drinks and earplugs using a software application that they can download onto a standard Android NFC smartphone... More
Taiwanese visitors to Japan to make contactless payments with domestic stored value cards
Taiwanese visitors to Okinawa prefecture in Japan will soon be able to make contactless payments directly settled in New Taiwan Dollars for small-value purchases using their EasyCard stored-value smart payments and transit card... More
World Bank reports ‘global surge’ in digital payments during pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has driven a “global surge” in digital payments with two-thirds of adults worldwide now making or receiving digital payments, rising from 35% in 2014 to 57% in 2021 in developing economies and from 88% in 2014 to 95% in 2021 in high-income economies, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex 2021 database... More
Delta rolls out metal contactless credit card made from recycled Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet
Delta Air Lines passengers in the USA can now apply for a contactless credit card which is the first to have been made using recycled aircraft metal... More
Westpac to let merchants accept contactless payments on Android NFC smartphones in Australia
Westpac bank in Australia is piloting a software point of sale (sPOS) solution that will enable merchants to accept contactless payments on their Android NFC smartphone or tablet without needing any additional accessories or hardware... More
Zuckerberg unveils plans to launch digital wallet for metaverse transactions
Meta is planning to develop a digital wallet that will enable consumers to purchase digital items such as digital clothing and music, confirm proof of ownership and manage their identity when accessing future metaverse services, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed in a Facebook post... More
Nigeria to let consumers use feature phones to make payments with national digital currency
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is to enable consumers without smartphones to make transactions with the country’s eNaira central bank digital currency (CBDC) on devices such as feature phones using unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) codes that work in a similar way to SMS messages... More