NFC

There are still regions where contactless and EMV cards are slow to roll out, and Mastercard is working to bring these markets up to speed so that they are ready for future innovations.

The bank's commitment in the last couple of years to an "agile" environment of rapid testing and learning produced answers within a couple of months.

Mastercard knows the more time consumers spend on their mobile devices—often deliberately blocking ads—the less likely they are to see its iconic “Priceless” ads, even if those ads support a charitable cause.

The U.S. may be undergoing a sea change in attitudes to contactless cards.

The mobile POS hardware and software provider is propelling its relationship with Apple to deliver technology for Major League Baseball that will allow entry into stadiums through digital tickets and Near Field Communication readers.

QR codes, NFC and host card emulation are all favored among among merchants and mobile wallet providers, writes André Stoorvogel, director of product marketing at Rambus.

Due to new and advanced analytical and analysis practices such as shopping behavior analysis, customer data, including credit card info, now travels to different teams within the organization, multiplying the opportunities for data leakage and exposure, writes Yo Delmar, vice president of GRC Solutions at MetricStream.

Transit agencies worldwide are attempting to eradicate cash and the bottlenecks that it causes from situations where customer throughput is paramount. But is this effort truly viable given the entrenched payment behaviors and requirements for serving everyone, even digital naysayers?

Successful mobile payment players such as Starbucks, Alipay and WeChat Pay all rely on optical scanning technology rather than NFC to execute payments. It's time the rest of the industry take note, writes Maikki Frisk, executive director of the Mobey Forum.

The U.S. and Canada are far behind Europe and Asia in contactless adoption in general. A handful of mass transit agencies are stirring hopes about NFC fare payments, but even these cities are taking a cautious approach to open-loop payments.

The slow and difficult EMV migration has slowed major adoption of contactless cards, but there are signs that momentum may be turning around.

Cash is still the most popular payment method in the U.K., but contactless cards and mobile payments gained significant momentum over the past year, according to new data.

In recent years, companies have aggressively reinvented the card-reading dongle to fit their brands and absorb new technologies like EMV and NFC. But few have succeeded in doing away with the dongle entirely.

Bank of America will tokenize BofA cards across Mastercard and Visa portfolios in the U.S., supporting PayPal's mobile wallet.

Mobile wallets have failed to excite many consumers, but Canada has an extreme case of paralysis underscoring the stark need for ongoing incentives to get consumers to change their payment habits.

Mobile QuickPass NFC payments are accepted at nearly a half million point-of-sale terminals outside of China, and QuickPass QR code payments have been available in Hong Kong and Singapore for about a month.

Punchh is betting NFC will be widespread, and it hopes to get an edge with clients with a direct connection to Apple Pay, enabling consumers to simultaneously earn and redeem restaurant loyalty program points.

Due in part to the U.S.'s lackluster adoption of contactless cards, mobile wallets had a slow and difficult time gaining hold among consumers and merchants that were unfamiliar with the tap-and-pay process or didn't have the right technology. The opposite problem plagues Canada, where contactless cards are so widely used that mobile adds little value.

The latest news on Apple Pay only serves to reinforce that everything within Apple’s ecosystem is on its terms. For that reason, developers can never be complacent — if native iOS functionalities are core to a third party app’s business proposition, that provider is in for a rude awakening.

LG is officially throwing its hat into the mobile payments arena with the launch of LG Pay in Korea. Available only on the flagship LG G6 handset, its technology has a lot in common with Samsung Pay, but may not be much of a challenge to its rival if it should come to the U.S.