Radio Frequency Technology

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 …

MasterCard Inc. expects the first wearable payment devices for use on its network to be available later this year, Sherri Haymond, senior vice president for digital payments for MasterCard, tells Digital Transactions News. The devices are part of MasterCard’s Commerce for Every Device Program, which is intended to add payment …

The increasing penetration of digital payments worldwide is helping drive conversion of point-of-sale terminals, vending machines, and parking meters from standalone devices to connected machines, according to a report released Tuesday by Berg Insight, a Gothenberg, Sweden-based research firm that follows the wireless market. Worldwide, Berg forecasts the number of …

Apple Inc. chief executive Tim Cook said Monday that nearly 700,000 U.S. merchant locations now accept the Apple Pay mobile-payment service, compared with the 220,000 locations reported to have accepted the service when it launched last October. Since Apple Pay relies on near-field communication (NFC) contactless technology to enable Apple’s iPhone …

A mobile point-of-sale service called Sequoia is promising card-present transaction rates for merchants using it, says developer 1Oak Technologies. n Using technology already inside smart phones, the app then creates an encrypted radio wave that is picked up by the Sequoia receiver attached to the payment terminal. That device creates …

Nine months after the Isis mobile wallet launched in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, usage among small merchants appears to be sporadic at best, despite considerable fanfare and promotion at the launch. But some of the factors blamed by merchants contacted by Digital Transactions News have little to do …

A slate of eight director candidates supported by a dissident shareholder group won election on Sunday at a special meeting of shareholders held by On Track Innovations Ltd., a vendor of contactless-payment solutions. The election, which expands the company’s board to 11 directors, hands control over the 22-year-old Israeli company …

Which was the big payments winner at the Summer Olympic Games in London, which ended Sunday? Answer: Cash, a contender that’s entered every Olympics ever held. Contactless cards and mobile devices accounted for very few payments, according to a Celent LLC analyst who visited two different Olympic venues last week. …

ViVOtech Inc., a pioneer in contactless payments and near-field communication (NFC) technology, disclosed Monday that it sold its card-reader business to ID Tech, a manufacturer of smart card readers and point-of-sale hardware and identity-verification products. The subject of reports last week that it was laying off people and possibly going …

Tyfone Inc. on Monday announced it has been awarded a pair of U.S. patents that the Portland, Ore.-based company says should make it easier to manufacture in commercial quantities key elements for mobile payments based on near-field communication (NFC) technology. NFC is a two-way contactless technology that allows, for example, …