Payments round-up: 8 November 2017
Just yesterday (7 November) was a payments round-up, but here’s more action from the lively paytech place. Features Apple, Coinsilium Group, UMT United Mobility Technology, Visa and even the Olympic Winter Games.
Apple, which is rarely out of the news, has set up Apple Pay Cash for person-to-person (P2P) payments in Messages. This feature is available with the iOS public beta from the Apple beta software programme. It’s available in the US first. No details on other countries yet.
People can use Apple Pay to pay and get paid right in Messages, or by asking Siri. There’s no app to download, and customers can use the cards already in their wallet.
Visa has unveiled three wearable payment devices for the Winter Olympics
With the Olympic Winter Games coming to PyeongChang in South Korea in 2018, Visa has unveiled three wearable payment devices. In the “spirit of the Olympic Winter Games” (I assume this doesn’t mean cheating), Visa created NFC-enabled payment gloves, commemorative stickers and Olympic pins that allow fans and athletes to complete payments with a tap at any contactless-enabled terminal.
Visa teamed up with Lotte Card, the financial arm of South Korean-based retail giant, Lotte Department Store, to produce and make these new wearables available for purchase in South Korea. In addition to this and as the “exclusive payment partner” of the Olympic Games, Visa is also managing the “entire payment system infrastructure and network throughout all venues within the Games”. This includes more than 1,000 contactless point-of-sale terminals capable of accepting mobile and wearable payments.
This could possibly have been in another round-up, but blockchain accelerator Coinsilium Group has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Munich-based UMT United Mobility Technology, which develops mobile payment and blockchain solutions.
Under the MoU, Coinsilium will, for a period of three months, work with UMT to “explore the potential to develop a B2C solution for a blockchain-based digital token to function as a medium of exchange specifically focused on mobile payments”. UMT currently holds 3,288,000 shares in Coinsilium representing 3.04% of the issued share capital of the Company, excluding treasury shares.
