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Barclays launches its answer to Android Pay
Ever since Barclays publicly shunned Android Pay in favour of its own NFC payment platform, the bank has kept pretty quiet over when you can use its Contactless Mobile service. But today, and without much fanfare, Barclays announced that Android users with a supported phone can now make NFC payments with the Barclays Mobile Banking app. It supports payments up to £100 and works everywhere a standard contactless card can be used.
Philips camera monitors baby vitals from afar
Sure, junior looks fine sleeping on the baby-cam, but do you know her or his oxygen level, heartbeat and breathing rate, you monster? Of course not (don't worry, you're a good parent), because there's no way of monitoring such things short of hooking the poor tyke up to a pulse oxymeter. At least, until now. Philips has revealed a camera that can detect all those things from afar, without touching the patient. The fruit of the companies contactless monitoring project, it can get a pulse rate, breathing rate and blood oxygen level by detecting changes in skin color that are invisible to the naked eye.
Barclays offers its own app as an Android Pay alternative
When Barclays confirmed it wasn't planning to support Google's Android Pay service when it launches in the UK, it said it would instead focus on the development of its own platform. Turns out that customers won't have to wait long to see what the bank has planned, after it confirmed today that it will roll out a new version of its banking app with support for "Contactless Mobile" in June.
London taxis must accept contactless payments from October
It's official: London's entire black cab fleet will be required to accept card and contactless payments from October this year. The new regulation received final approval from the Transport for London (TfL) Board today, after the authority and Mayor Boris Johnson championed the proposal late last year. Some of the capital's Hackney carriages already take cards, of course, and apps like Hailo and Gett can simplify the payment process further where they're supported. But, for a decent proportion of black cabs, cash is still king.
Barclays confirms it'll support Apple Pay by April
Since it came to Britain in July 2015, Apple Pay has made slow and steady progress, with 15 banks or credit card issuers now supporting the service. However, in that time, Barclays has done nothing but flip-flop over its decision to link its cards with Apple's NFC payment platform. After first declining to comment at launch, the bank quickly changed its mind and voiced support for the service. It then made customers wait months before offering an "early 2016" launch date at the end of last year. Following another few months of silence and hundreds of irate customer tweets, Barclays CEO Ashok Vaswani has finally offered to clear things up, confirming that Apple Pay support will roll out by April at the very latest.
Oyster and contactless cards now stretch to Gatwick Airport
If you live in London and regularly take the train to Gatwick Airport, we've got good news: starting today, you can use your Oyster card to travel to the station just outside departures. That applies to contactless cards and Apple Pay too, negating the need to buy a standalone ticket. Convenient, especially if you're up at the crack of dawn and want to avoid waiting for a self-service machine in the cold. (We've been there, and it's not fun.) Of course, you might get a cheaper fare by ordering a ticket online in advance. If you're poorly organised, however, or simply not fussed about saving a few pounds, this should make your next trip a little less stressful.
UK trains to let contactless cards act as paper tickets
In the future, Brits will be able to slide through a ticket barrier and board a train without using a credit card-sized piece of paper. As The Telegraph reports, talks are underway to introduce a new ticketing system that will rely on contactless cards instead. Under the plans, you'll be able to buy tickets online and then use the same card to swipe through special readers at the station. The initiative won't replace paper tickets, at least not straight away, but rather complement them similar to how Oyster cards and contactless cards do currently on the London Underground.
Contactless payments now accepted on London's cross-Thames cable car
Since contactless payments were first accepted on London buses a few years ago, it's become increasingly easy to get around the capital without cash or a loaded Oyster card. Whether you're equipped with a contactless card, Apple Pay or another mobile wallet, you can ride the vast majority of London transport services hassle-free. And as of today, you can now use contactless payments on the Emirates Air Line cable car, too. Sure, it's a limited service that only travels between the Royal Docks and the Greenwich Peninsula, but if you're after some lofty views of the capital, an empty wallet will no longer impede you. With this addition, London's transport network is almost as contactless-friendly as it can get, with Thames riverboats now the only service that still requires an old-fashioned ticket purchase.
Apple Pay goes live in the UK: Here's how to use it
It's been a while coming, but Apple Pay is now live in the UK. If you own an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, or an Apple Watch connected to an older iPhone, you now have the option of paying for purchases without cards or cash. But how do you set it up, where can you use it, and how much can you spend? These are all questions you might, quite rightfully, need answering before you even think about going on an iPhone-fuelled spending spree. That's where we come in. We've put together a handy cheat sheet that explains all you need to know about Apple Pay in the UK. Read on to learn more.
UK Apple Pay transactions won't be limited forever
When Apple finally confirmed it was launching Apple Pay in the UK, questions over how it would operate immediately surfaced. Between supporting banks and retailers, it became clear that transactions will be capped at £20, the same limit that contactless bank cards enjoy, putting a downer on people's plans to use Apple's NFC payment service for a weekly shop. After staying relatively quiet since the launch, Apple has finally spoken about the matter, launching a new FAQ to clear up what exactly will happen when the July launch rolls around.
UK Apple Pay purchases to face the £20 contactless cap
Apple Pay is on its way to the UK next month, and from launch, all the big banks except Barclays, and a quarter of a million retail outlets will support it. And yet, despite so many day-one partners, it seems we're not quite ready for it. You see, Apple Pay isn't like any other contactless payment method we use already, since you authorise transactions with a Touch ID fingerprint scan. Contactless debit and credit cards don't require any kind of authentication, which is why transactions are currently limited to a maximum of £20, though the cap is increasing to £30 in September. The whole point of the two-step Apple Pay process is that you can make purchases of any amount using your iPhone, but today we're hearing that the majority of retailers will be bound by the £20 cap at launch.
Britain now prefers cashless payments to notes and coins
It's taken a while, but the UK is now primarily cashless. No, it's not all-digital, but for the first time, consumers and businesses are making more payments with cards, smartphones and online banking than standard notes and coins. That's according to the Payments Council, which found that 52 percent were completed without physical currency, with debit cards accounting for almost a quarter (24 percent) of all payments.
You can spend up to £30 using contactless payments from September
Contactless cards have been available in the UK for a number of years now, but it's fair to say that it's not yet become the defacto method of payment. Part of the reason is due to the £20 ceiling placed on such purchases, ruling it out when paying for a weekly supermarket shop or a romantic meal for two, but with widespread support across London's bus and underground routes, more people are starting to get on board. In fact, the UK Cards Association has confirmed that spending without a PIN trebled last year as UK payments reached a record £2.32 billion.
Loop turns almost any point-of-sale system into a mobile payment machine (hands-on)
In a small shop on University Avenue in Palo Alto, mobile payments vet Will Graylin proudly points out the point-of-sale (POS) system sitting next to the register. "This is a 13-year-old Hypercom," Will explains, emphasizing its age and the lack of modern mobile payment options. Then, he does something we haven't seen before: he puts his iPhone next to the mag-stripe reader, taps a button on his screen and the transaction gets processed as if he'd physically swiped his card. Companies like Google, Isis and MasterCard (among others) are competing with each other to see who can establish an NFC-based mobile payments standard and build a strong enough ecosystem to support it, but Will -- along with co-founder George Wallner -- is approaching the highly competitive and nascent smartphone commerce market from an entirely new direction. The duo's new company, known as Loop, is debuting a new platform that will let you use your phone to make payments on nearly 90 percent of all POS systems in the country, even if they don't have any tech embedded inside that's capable of accepting contactless payments. Continue with us below to see a hands-on gallery and a deeper explanation of what exactly makes this possible.
NXP's silicon fingerprinting promises to annoy the heck out of ID hackers
It's 2013 and white hat hackers like Adam Laurie are still breaking into ID chips that are supposed to be secure. How come? Partly it's the way of the world, because no man-made NFC or RFID security barrier can ever be truly impervious. But in practical terms, a chip's vulnerability often stems from the fact that it can be taken apart and probed at a hacker's leisure. The secure element doesn't necessarily need to have power running through it or to be in the midst of near-field communication in order to yield up its cryptographic key to a clever intruder who has sufficient time and sufficient desire to breach the security of a smartphone, bank card or national border. Which brings us to the latest device in NXP's SmartMX2 range -- a piece of technology that is claimed to work very differently and that is expected to hit the market next year. Instead of a traditional key stored in the secure element's memory, every single copy of this chip carries a unique fingerprint within the physical structure of its transistors. This fingerprint (aka Physically Unclonable Function, or PUF) is a byproduct of tiny errors in the fabrication process -- something chip makers usually try to minimize. But NXP has found a way to amplify these flaws in a controlled way and use them for identification, and it'd take a mightily well-equipped criminal (or fare dodger, or Scrabble cheater) to reverse engineer that.
London buses now accept NFC contactless payments, if you have the magic logo
Transport for London has emailed customers to announce the activation of NFC contactless payments on the city's fleet of 8,500 buses, despite any hiccups on the tube. From today, anyone who swipes a debit, credit, or charge card with the logo shown after the break should theoretically be allowed onboard for the same single fare as a traditional Oyster Card user. That's £1.35 instead of the £2.30 cash fare. The logo can also be found on Orange's Quick Tap-enabled Galaxy S III, but the official email makes no explicit mention of any smartphones being compatible. If you have the guts to swipe your GS III over the reader and test it, please let us know if it works (and it's probably better to try it discreetly, in case it doesn't). Customers are also being advised to avoid swiping wallets which contain two potential payment methods -- such as an NFC card and an RFID-based Oyster Card -- so they can control which card gets billed.
Mastercard previewing smartphone web payment system with in-person security strength
Mastercard is already a big fish in the still tiny NFC contactless payment pond, and now it wants to take that same technology to a veritable ocean -- internet sales. The plastic purveyor is tag-teaming with ING in the Netherlands for PayPass-based smartphone internet payments that would have a "comparable level of security" to bricks and mortar purchases -- by transmitting an EMV-compliant cryptogram or QR code to merchants. That would theoretically make online shopping less risky, and the system would also allow coupons and vouchers to be applied, giving a "similar user experience in both the physical and digital world." The Dutch trial has already started and will continue until early 2013, but there's no word if new users can still jump in -- check the PR after the break to read the tea leaves for yourself.
Isis mobile payment system primed for September launch, supported devices revealed
You've known it was coming, but Isis has been so quiet on the mobile payments front in the past few months that you might've forgotten the score. Now, the joint venture backed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon has announced that it'll debut its system in Austin and Salt Lake City next month. At least part of the delay is attributed to its shift in strategy, when Isis shelved its plans to process payments through the carriers themselves and instead work with MasterCard and Visa. Isis representatives have declined to elaborate on future expansion plans. Coinciding with the recent update that enabled Isis support for T-Mobile's Galaxy S II, MasterCard has come clean with a list of devices that'll receive similar treatment. Specifically, those in the US can expect the Droid Incredible 4G LTE, One X, Amaze 4G, Galaxy S III to gain Isis support. Naturally, the possibility remains open for other devices as well, and if you'd like to see the complete list of candidates, make sure to check out the PDF below.
Sony applies for wireless power patent, wants to daisy-chain your energy
As much as we're familiar with wireless power, we know developing a truly contact-free form of charging has a whole raft of extra challenges, such as getting into the sweet spot for power delivery and the potential traffic jam caused by throwing another device into the mix. Sony thinks it has these problems licked through a newly-published patent application. Its method uses location-finding to steer users until they're close enough for the wireless power source to reliably do its job. In some cases, it can use one mobile device to relay power to another, keeping everything fed even if the main power hub is tied up. Multiple power sources next to each other can go so far as to decide which of them should be the one to send power. The patent isn't a certain sign that your VAIO or Xperia is about to cut the cord altogether -- Sony first submitted this vision of the future in 2009. Even so, it gives us hope that our gadgets will one day start charging themselves instead of making us hunt down a wire or charging plate.
Moneto NFC microSD to bring contactless features to any Android phone
DeviceFidelity and Spring Card Systems have teamed up on a NFC-capable microSD card that will hopefully forgo the need of buying specific mobile handsets for the privilege of contactless payments. The card, which has been in development for a few years, houses an NFC radio and antenna that deals with payments through MasterCard's PayPass system. Moneto's iPhone case is already available, offering swipe payment delights for iOS users for $80, and includes $10 of spendable cash. The microSD card is set to land in the next few weeks, pegged at $30. Both will be available at the source below, with plans to support several -- as yet unnamed -- Android devices by Q2, rolling out further throughout 2012.
