Starbucks launches pay by app for iPhone users in the UK

US international coffee company Starbucks has added pay by app capabilities to enable UK iPhone users to pay for drinks with their phones.

Starbucks customers will be able to scan a unique barcode on their iPhones at the till so that their accounts can be charged. The app, however, does not allow users to either pre-order or specify their drinks electronically.

The service is available to owners of Starbucks' loyalty card, and synchronises their account and balance information with their iPhone so they are charged the correct amount. Furthermore, the app’s loyalty scheme allows customers to qualify as gold level members to get free drinks.

In December 2011, Starbucks saw the number of transactions carried out via its mobile channel exceed 26 million since the beginning of 2011 when its mobile payments program was launched.

Cashless Lagos

Central Bank of Nigeria enlists Ingenico as 'cashless Lagos' experiment begins

Nigeria's central bank has kicked off its 'cashless Lagos' project, introducing limits on how much paper money people can withdraw and deposit in a bid to encourage the transition to electronic payment methods.

 

Last year the central bank set out a range of policies designed to wean the country off expensive and risky cash in favour of electronic money, arguing that the dominance of paper has big cash management, security and money laundering implications.

Lagos State is acting as the testing ground for the policy, and citizens will now face a daily cumulative limit of N150,000 for cash withdrawals and deposits with corporations told to stick to a limit of N1000,000.

However, the charges levied for exceeding these amounts will not come into force until 31 March amid concern and confusion over the plans, with the central bank also issuing a statement clarifying that it is trying to reduce, not eliminate, paper money.

The CBN argues that it wants: "To drive development and modernisation of our payment system in line with Nigeria's vision 2020 goal of being amongst the top 20 economies by the year 2020. An efficient and modern payment system is positively correlated with economic development, and is a key enabler for economic growth."

To help make electronic payments more accessible, CBN has selected French vendor Ingenico for the provision of point-of-sale terminals. Guaranty Trust Bank, Zenith Bank, United Bank for Africa, First Bank, First City Monument Bank, Oceanic Bank and Unity Bank have between them already purchased 14,000 Ingenico machines for deployment this year. As the project is expanded to the rest of Nigeria, Ingenico claims it could end up supplying hundreds of thousands of terminals over the next four years.

Gansirey Seck, MD, Ingenico Nigeria, says: "Ingenico is very pleased with the success obtained in a short timeframe in Nigeria. Taking customers beyond conventional payment through value added services on the POS will greatly contribute to the sustainable development of electronic payment in Nigeria."

US Migration to EMV Chip Technology

Find out why the US is finally ready to join the rest of the world and implement EMV into it's borders.

Most of the world has fully migrated or is in the process of migrating to EMV chip technology for debit and credit payments. According to EMVCo, approximately 1.2 billion EMV cards have been issued globally and 18.7 million POS devices accept EMV cards as of Q1 2011. This represents 40.1 percent of the total payment cards in circulation and 71 percent of the POS devices installed globally [EMVCO2011].

Given the prevalence of EMV chip technology in the rest of the world, many have questioned if and when the United States would move to EMV. U.S. financial institutions started issuing EMV chip cards to their frequently traveling customers; however the country seemed to be a long way off from acceptance [Gemalto2011]. All of this changed on August 9, 2011 when Visa announced plans to speed up chip migration and adoption of mobile payments in the United States. Visa announced a three-part acceleration plan [Visa2011]:

• Expand the Technology Innovation Program to Merchants in the U.S.
• Build Processing Infrastructure for Chip Acceptance
• Establish a Counterfeit Fraud Liability Shift

With this announcement from Visa, the United States payments landscape is no longer a future of magnetic stripe technology, but one of EMV chip technology and contactless and mobile payments. This paper will examine why the timing is good for EMV in the United States, and will discuss implementation and cost considerations for merchants and issuers.

Click here to download a free copy of The Migration to EMV Chip Technology by Gemalto white paper.

Biometrics in Banking

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By Lockerz

There is an increase in the use of biometrics in banking for client-facing applications. Turkey, Brunei, Nigeria and Poland are just some of the countries that have already announced biometric ATMs, for example. The use of biometrics at the till for payment is also on the rise. Some cite the fact that there has not been a massive up-take in the use of biometrics in consumer facing applications as evidence that the technology does not yet function to an adequate level of performance. Every large biometric deployment I have been involved in has entailed rigorous and exhaustive testing to clearly demonstrate accuracy performance against clearly and aggressively pre-defined test parameters, in real-world environments, using customer data; I don’t expect financial customers would be any less arduous. I do agree that lab testing / data is insufficient, and solution providers who are unwilling or unable to demonstrate predictable and repeatable accuracy SLAs in real-world environments should be treated with caution. Is a biometric system fallible? Yes. The question is, is it less fallible then existing precautions already in place, and does the deployment of such a system, in simple financial terms, demonstrate a clear ROI. Again, the answer is: Yes. Rather, I believe that the thus far reluctance in Western societies to deploy such systems en masse for consumer identification is more due to the banks’ concern of how such systems will be perceived by their clientele; the UK populace, for example, is ever suspicious of Big Brother, their governments and large institutions. However, these “perception barriers” are already lowering, and there is mounting evidence that public opposition, where clear benefit is realised, is eroding. Banks are now increasingly becoming aware of the value of biometric identification, of both their internal staff and their external clientele, especially in the area of high net-worth individuals and high-value transactions, and I expect we will see many exciting developments in identification solutions for this market.

To Be or NFC that is the question

At the end of 2010, the predictions made by Forrester were that Near Field Communication (NFC) would start to come into its own in 2011, though they had noted that it would be far from mainstream by the close of this year.

Now that it’s a year later, the predictions are starting to come in for next year, and this year’s use of NFC is starting to be reexamined in order to make the forecasts. In 2011, it has been estimated that between 35 and 40 million smartphones enabled with NFC have been shipped worldwide. Many of the top mobile manufacturers shipped devices with NFC, though Apple is the most notable exception to that rule.

Although this does look promising for the future, it should still be recognized that overall, only a very small percentage of the overall mobile device shipments include NFC capabilities. In fact, less than 1 percent of mobile device owning consumers have a product that includes NFC.

This has left many retailers wondering if it will be worth their while to invest in the point of sale (POS) reader products for NFC, considering that they can be very expensive, and the number of shoppers that use the technology may not be there yet. It is likely that this type of contactless payment service will take a few more years to become mainstream – though pilot programs are popping up here and there.

Equally, contactless payment is not the only benefit available from NFC. Currently, marketers believe that the true value to the technology is that occurring before and after the purchase of the product; for example, providing consumers with discount coupons, loyalty points, and other types of rewards relating to their purchase.

The reality of shopping! What about contactless?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sk7cOqB9Dk