Passengers travelling to Dubai will soon begin piloting a biometric border system that makes use of blockchain technology and lets them walk straight to baggage reclaim through a short tunnel which conducts a three dimensional scan of their face and instantly checks them into the country using an entirely digital version of their passport... More
Apple’s HomeKit smart home framework will soon support the use of NFC for accessory pairing, the iPhone maker has revealed... More
The international patent and software portfolio belonging to NFC payments specialist Helixion is now up for sale as the company enters liquidation... More
International standard completed for high rate close proximity wireless communications exceeding 10 Gbps data rate — TransferJet Consortium — “This new standard maintains the intuitive ease-of-use and can instantly transfer any type of data including large 4K definition and VR (virtual reality) video files… The required connection setup time has been reduced to 2 msec or less, allowing new usage scenarios such as the delivery of content while walking through ticketing gates.”
PARTNER NEWS: NXP is “excited about the expanding number of users of NFC applications” following the announcement made by Apple earlier this week that it is to add support for NFC tag reading to its iPhone 7, 7 Plus and Apple Watch devices... More
World’s first car made from bio composites makes global debut — Plastics Today — “To complement Lina’s sustainability, she is equipped with several high-tech features. For example, near field communication (NFC) technology implemented in her doors is used to detect and recognize different users, making the vehicle highly suited for car-sharing platforms.”
Carrefour Banque offers instant activation of new C-zam account with Gemalto Digital PIN — Gemalto — PARTNER NEWS — “‘C-zam offers Carrefour customers the opportunity to buy in store a bank account and a banking card that can be activated on line,’ said Frédéric Mazurier, CEO of Market Pay. ‘With the support of Gemalto, we are innovating to evolve the French banking market by offering a new service in terms of accessibility, availability and usability.'”
Customers visiting US pharmacy and wellness center Chambers’ Apothecary in Chambersburg can now tap their NFC devices against NFC tags affixed to shelves throughout the store to interact with products and access a “wide variety of information” including user reviews, customer surveys and videos directly on their mobile phone... More
Feds look to experimental light-field cameras to ID drivers at the border — The Verge — “Developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory at the request of US Customs and Border Patrol… The system draws on light-field sensor arrays to mitigate the glass barrier, allowing cameras to focus past the reflections on the windshield to the faces of the drivers and passengers.”
PARTNER NEWS: Rambus is working with Google and Canada’s Interac Association to enable support for Interac debit cards on Android Pay following its launch in the country earlier this month... More
At Alibaba, artificial intelligence is changing how people shop online — Alizila — “Alibaba is spreading artificial intelligence throughout its core e-commerce operations, making it a cornerstone technology to speed the arrival of what company officials envision to be the future of not only e-commerce, but all commerce.”
SA scientists develop next-gen digital ID tech — IT Web — “The technology, dubbed aiDX, is an advanced identification technology that uses deep science to simulate human cognition in order to confirm or determine the identity of a person to industrial grade standards on any smartphone or device equipped with a camera.”
More than half of all card-present transactions conducted globally (52.4%) between January and December 2016 used the EMV chip card standard, up from 35.8% for the same period in 2015, standards body EMVCo has revealed... More
New CSA report offers observations, recommendations on connected vehicle security — Cloud Security Alliance — “The paper will provide a ‘big picture’ view of the various aspects of vehicles and infrastructure components to better understand their interrelationships, dependencies and threats to the traffic ecosystem.”
LG has announced the launch of its LG Pay mobile payments service in Korea, allowing consumers with the LG G6 smartphone to make mobile payments using the service’s Wireless Magnetic Communication (WMC) technology... More
Using your gait to power and secure devices — CSIRO — “Researchers from CSIRO’s Data61 have developed new technology which uses the way a person walks, their gait, to power wearable devices. The technology also has the potential to be used as a new authentication method, which could replace passwords, PINs or fingerprints.”
Employees at UK bank Barclays and Barclaycard’s London office have begun piloting a new payment concept that allows them to buy low-value goods in the staff restaurant by scanning the barcode on the items using their smartphone and completing the purchase “with a single click” without needing to visit the physical checkout. More
Public-private sector digital currency experiment releases results of phase II — Payments Canada — “The Bank of Canada, along with Payments Canada, R3 and seven commercial banks, today disclosed the results of phase II of Project Jasper, an experimental wholesale interbank payment system, using digital ledger technology (DLT)… The results show that, despite progress made, underpinning an entire wholesale payments system with DLT still faces many hurdles.”
Some 2,000 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons have been installed across London’s Gatwick Airport to provide an indoor navigation system and an augmented reality wayfinding service so that passengers can be shown directions in the camera view of their mobile device. More
Samsung has responded to the group of hackers from the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) who managed to defeat the iris recognition system on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones, saying that the hackers’ claims could “only have been made under a rare combination of circumstances”. More