‘Contactless’ has made the shortlist for the 2015 Collins Word of the Year but missed out on the top spot to the word ‘Binge-watch’... More
Smartwatch
G&D provides NFC chip and operating system for Swatch smartwatch
PARTNER NEWS: Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is providing the embedded smart card chip and operating system used in the NFC contactless payment smartwatch launched by Swatch in China last month... More
AMS unveils NFC chip and antenna for adding payments and ticketing to wearable devices
PARTNER NEWS: Chip maker AMS has introduced an NFC payments and ticketing solution for manufacturers of smartwatches, wristbands and other small devices that only have room for an extremely small antenna... More
Dubai commuters to replace travel cards with watches
Commuters in Dubai may soon be able to pay for travel using contactless watches from Watch2Pay... More
Blocks smashes Kickstarter campaign for build-your-own NFC smartwatch
A UK startup raising funds on Kickstarter for a modular smartwatch that includes NFC and contactless payment functionality has amassed pledges totalling more than double its US$250,000 target in just two days. More
China’s FiiSmart to develop smartwatch that supports Alipay
Shenzhen-based wearable device maker FiiSmart has launched a campaign on ecommerce giant Alibaba’s Taobao Crowdfunding website for a smartwatch that will support Ant Financial’s mobile payment platform Alipay and allow its wearers to make payments by generating a QR-code that can then be scanned at the point-of-sale... More
uBirds seeks funding for strap that brings NFC to any watch
Warsaw-based start-up uBirds has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a leather strap that can be fitted onto any standard watch to add a range of smartwatch-like capabilities... More
Korean Samsung Pay users spend $30m in first month of launch
More than US$30m has been spent through Samsung Pay since the mobile payment service’s launch in Korea one month ago, Samsung has revealed... More
Samsung Pay coming to Gear S2 in November
Samsung has confirmed its mobile payment service Samsung Pay will be made available on its recently unveiled Gear S2 smartwatch from November, Droid Life reports... More
Sony unveils Wena Wrist with NFC payments
Sony is crowdfunding a new smartwatch called Wena Wrist that is equipped with NFC payments compatible with the Japanese Felica standard... More
Samsung unveils Gear S2 with NFC
Samsung has unveiled the Samsung Gear S2, its latest smartwatch which includes NFC for payments... More
Half of Brits expect to replace cash with new technologies
More than a quarter of UK consumers (27%) think they will be making payments using wearable devices including watches and wristbands within 10 years, 22% think they will be regularly using their fingerprint to make those payments and 7% think they will use a microchip embedded in their body, research from Lloyds Bank reveals... More
620m biometric app downloads by 2020
More than 620m mobile banking apps that support biometrics for customer authentication and transaction verification will be downloaded by 2020, research from Goode Intelligence predicts... More
DigiSEq gets MasterCard approval to provision payments to mass market wearables
MasterCard has approved a solution that enables payment credentials to be provisioned to wearable devices with a secure element and NFC antenna... More
Wearable payments to reach $501bn by 2020
Payments made using wearable devices such as smart watches, fitness trackers and wristbands will grow from US$3.1bn in 2015 to $501.1bn worldwide by 2020, research from market intelligence firm Tractica finds... More
Alfa-Bank customers get contactless watches to make payments
Customers of Russia’s Alfa-Bank can now use a contactless-enabled watch designed and supplied by Austrian company Watch2Pay to make payments with a tap of their wrist wherever MasterCard PayPass is accepted... More
“Highly interested” Canadians ready for mobile payments
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
Samsung smartwatches to support Samsung Pay?
Samsung is planning to offer Samsung Pay mobile payments on the smartwatch devices it is scheduled to launch in the second half of this year... More
Gazprombank pilots NFC tickets
Russia’s Gazprombank and MasterCard are piloting NFC mobile and contactless card payments for transit fares using PayPass terminals across the K-39 bus route in St Petersburg... More
Swatch smartwatch to launch in two countries
Swiss watchmaker Swatch Group is to launch its NFC smartwatch in two countries this summer, Switzerland and “one big country”, CEO Nick Hayek revealed during the company’s annual general meeting... More