Contactless payments

Gromit Unleashed 2 will be incorporating contactless donation points along the art trail to aid the Bristol Children’s Hospital — a project that is as much a necessity as it is an innovation in the U.K.'s aggressively contactless environment.

The Australian state of Queensland has selected Cubic Corp. of San Diego to develop a mass-transit ticketing system that will support contactless payments and real-time rider account information for public transportation in the region surrounding Brisbane.

As contactless cards continue their momentum in the U.K., new use cases are popping up for the tap-and-go technology.

Royal Bank of Canada is one of three Canadian banks with a presence in the Caribbean, and is deploying contactless card readers throughout the region to ride a wave of digital payment adoption.

New Jersey’s commuter rail and bus system is joining the movement to add contactless payment options for commuters, which observers say could spark broader adoption of mobile payments across the U.S.

Wirecard and Enio, an Austria-based supplier of electric car charging stations throughout Europe, are collaborating to enable contactless payments at thousands of sites.

This month, Vancouver became the first Canadian city to commercially roll out open transit payments. But the city of Laval actually got a head start on Vancouver with a pilot project that is getting a positive reaction from riders.

Despite Canada's high penetration of contactless POS terminals and consumer affinity for the technology, the country has lagged behind nations such as the U.K. and Singapore in contactless payments. That is set to change as Canada's transit schemes launch contactless open-payment systems.

American Express has issued a series of deadlines for merchant acquirers in markets outside of the U.S. in an attempt to jolt the global migration.

Contactless payments have become increasingly popular in the U.K. over the past couple of years due to the advantages they offer in terms of speed and ease of payment — but despite this, much of the U.K. public does not trust the format.