Near-Field Communication (NFC)

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews As retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kohl’s Corp. ramp up their mobile wallets, the tech companies that offer general-purpose SimplyTapp Inc. developed the original HCE technology. Google, now the main subsidiary of Mountain View, Calif.-based Alphabet, included HCE in late 2013 in Android 4.4, also …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Six Pepsi-licensed bottlers will use USA Technologies Inc.’s cashless payments devices in 2,120 vending machines, the Malvern, Pa.-based vending-payments specialist announced Wednesday. USAT also released its fiscal second-quarter earnings showing revenue at $21.8 million, but a year-to-date loss of $2.2 million. The Pepsi bottler announcement—for a cooperative …

Apple Inc. reported record quarterly sales Tuesday for its iPhone smart-phone models while chief executive Tim Cook briefly sketched a strong quarter and year for Apple Pay, the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer company’s mobile-payments service. Speaking to analysts in an afternoon earnings call to discuss Apple’s results for the three months …

Mobile wallets have struggled in the United States to win consumer adoption and usage, but worldwide the technology is growing smartly. And even in the U.S. market, it’s expected to pick up momentum. That’s according to a report issued Monday by U.K.-based Juniper Research. The firm estimates global payments volume …

A San Francisco analytics company with access to transaction data on 3 million consumer credit and debit cards says usage of Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile-payment service rose steadily in 2016. TXN Solutions Inc. also says that among brick-and-mortar merchants Apple Pay usage is highest at New York City-area pharmacy …

Travel providers have new options for accommodating how consumers use their smart phones to pay for travel. Ticketing-software vendor Rambus Ecebs has introduced a set of products for mobile ticketing that rely on host card emulation to load smart cards into smart phones. Host card emulation enables download of payment credentials via …

The digital-payments revolution may finally be poised to relegate cash to the sidelines of finance. Worldwide, 471 billion so-called cashless transactions flowed through payments networks in 2015, a 52% increase since the end of 2011 and up 13% over 2014, according to numbers released this week by Retail Banking Research …

Contactless cards were tried in the U.S. years ago and soon fell by the wayside, giving the technology a black eye among issuers. Now a report released Monday in the U.K., where contactless is catching on fast, could revive hopes for the technology. Some 325 million debit and credit card …

Vending-payments specialist USA Technologies Inc. is integrating its MORE. loyalty platform into Apple Pay, the company announced Thursday. The deal is designed to induce more consumers to use Apple Pay at almost 300,000 vending machines that use USAT’s contactless payment technology and to encourage them to use the MORE. program. …

Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit will launch two new smart watches in the first quarter of 2017 that will run on the new Android Wear 2.0 platform and will support Android Pay, Google’s mobile-payments service. Jeff Chang, product manager for Android Wear, announced the news in an interview with The Verge, a tech Web …