Mastercard is urging its merchant partners in Canada to raise their caps on contactless payments to $250. In announcing the effort, Mastercard framed it as one focused on public health, under the rationale that contactless payments help to facilitate social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also may be viewed as an effort to further…
The GSMA has released its annual report on the state of the mobile money industry. The report found that there are now more than one billion registered mobile money accounts worldwide, and that the industry as a whole processed roughly $2 billion in transactions every day in 2019. The number of active accounts is only…
The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is hoping to make the DMV experience a little more convenient for Virginia residents. The Department has announced that it will now accept Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay at all of its 75 locations across the state. Citizens can also use the mobile wallets at any DMV…
Apple has entered into negotiations that could bring Apple Pay to Israel. The tech giant is now in talks with Israeli banks and credit companies, although the two sides are currently at odds over Apple’s high commission fees, which are usually somewhere between 0.15 and 0.25 percent of each transaction. While those numbers may not…
Syniverse has formed a strategic partnership with Samsung SDS that will lead to the development of a universal mobile payments platform. The two companies came to the table to sign a Memorandum of Understanding during the recent CES event in Las Vegas. The new payments platform is designed to be wallet-agnostic, which is to say…
Samsung has released a new rugged smartphone designed for the company’s enterprise customers. The Galaxy XCover Pro features a long-lasting (and replaceable) 4,050mAh battery to deliver reliable performance for long days in the field. It is also MIL-STD 810G certified and IP68 water and dust resistant, allowing it to withstand rain and other adverse conditions. …
Juniper Research has released a new report that predicts that there will be more than 161 million contactless Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals in use by 2024, more than doubling the total number of such terminals in 2019. There are currently around 78 million contactless POS terminals in circulation. POS terminals without contactless capabilities will be rapidly…
A new report from Juniper Research suggests that biometric technology will revolutionize the mobile payments industry over the next few years. The firm predicts that consumers will use biometric authentication to conduct $2.5 trillion in payment transactions on mobile devices by 2024. That number represents a massive 1,000 percent increase over the comparable $228 billion…
Apple Pay has now arrived in Bulgaria and Belarus. Apple’s biometrically secured mobile payments platform arrived in the former country via First Investment Bank, or Fibank, earlier this month; in Belarus, meanwhile, the platform has just launched with the support of BPS-Sberbank. As 9to5Mac reports, this is the domestic arm of the major Russian bank…
The card consolidation platform Curve is now compatible with Samsung Pay. The integration will allow Curve users to link their Samsung Pay account to a debit or credit card from Mastercard or Visa, and gives those users their first entirely mobile payment option. Curve provides its customers with an app and a card that allows…
Google has now enabled facial recognition as a means of authentication on its Google Pay mobile payments platform. The move is the result of Google’s recent launch of the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones. Whereas previous devices in Google’s Pixel line used fingerprint recognition as the primary means of biometric authentication, with the…
Juniper Research has released a new report that suggests that the Mobile Financial Services (MFS) market is set to explode in the next few years. The firm predicts that the total transaction value of the market will climb from $580 billion in 2019 to more than $1 trillion by 2024. The expansion of the Latin…
It’s been another varied week in Mobile ID World’s coverage of the latest innovations in mobile tech, payments, the Internet of Things, and more. And the latest roundup of the week’s most popular articles reflects that variety. If there’s any kind of trend in this latest batch, it may be FinTech, with two of this…
Samsung is once again following Apple’s lead in their ongoing digital money rivalry, announcing a new digital wallet system called Samsung Pay Cash. It’s essentially a means of letting users of Samsung Pay, Samsung’s mobile payments system, carry a balance on their Samsung smartphones. A user can load money onto Samsung Pay Cash, and then…
“The new Tap&Pay system doesn’t even require users to ‘wake up’ their smartphone screen; essentially the phone – so long as it’s running on Android P or later – becomes its own kind of contactless transit card.” Samsung has made its mobile payments platform easier to use on public transit in two major American cities,…
Apple recently revealed that it is paying close attention to the growing cryptocurrency trend, though it’s not yet clear what role the company would like to play in the evolving market. “We’re watching cryptocurrency,” Apple Pay VP Jennifer Bailey told CNN during a private event. “We think it has interesting long-term potential.” “This would be…
In the wake of HID Global’s announcement that its technology would help students at South Carolina’s Clemson University to use virtual student ID cards on their iPhones and Apple Watches, Apple has revealed that it’s working to bring this functionality to many more colleges and universities this autumn. Not only Clemson University, but also Georgetown…
Looking back on this week’s most popular articles on Mobile ID World, it’s clear that money was the big theme. Breaking that broad theme down further, a major topic was digital wallets. Mezu and Mastercard announced a new digital debit card for mobile payments, and a cryptocurrency wallet revealed some hard evidence of the security…
Mezu is teaming up with Mastercard to release a digital debit card that will allow Mezu users to make purchases anywhere Mastercard is accepted. Mezu is a mobile payments app that does not share any personal information or transaction history with third parties and leverages biometric authentication for added security. The partnership with Mastercard will…
