Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe and Mercado Pago have followed PayPal in pulling out of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project. The moves mean that PayU is now the only payments company to still be listed as a founding member of the Libra Association. Read the rest of Facebook loses Libra cryptocurrency backers at NFCW.

The UK’s Royal Mint has unveiled a payment card that is produced entirely from 18-karat gold and comes with “no spending limit”. Dubbed “the world’s first hallmarked precious metals payment card”, the new Raris debit card is part of a growing trend in ultra-premium card formats. Swiss jeweller Armillion, for instance, recently unveiled a contactless

Madrid public transportation operator EMT has announced plans to run two next-generation transportation payments pilots. The first is a blockchain-based mobility-as-a-service platform while the second involves a six month pilot of face recognition based ticketing on the city’s buses. For the blockchain project, the goal is to create a single mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platform that can

A major investigation into US consumers’ attitudes to mobile payments has found that concerns over how well they would be protected against loss should an issue arise is now the major barrier to widespread adoption of the technology. The findings are based on a nationally representative survey conducted by The Pew Charitable Trusts. This captured

The introduction of the Japanese government’s Cashless Japan initiative, which provides consumers with cashback incentives when they use a card or mobile phone to make a purchase, has led to a significant upswing in mobile payments adoption, according to reports from a number of merchants and mobile payments providers. Launched on 1 October, Cashless Japan

PARTNER NEWS: Raiffeisen Bank has launched an Android NFC mobile payments service in Romania and the Czech Republic that uses Antelop Solutions’ digital payments and tokenization platform. The bank, one of the largest retail banking groups in Europe with 25 million customers in 15 countries, now plans to make the service available in additional territories.

Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority is to introduce a mobile version of its Nol transit card next year, enabling both tourists and local residents to use their NFC phones to travel on metro, tram, bus and maritime public transportation services. “The Nol Virtual Card is planned to be launched in the third quarter of 2020,

The UK’s NatWest bank has begun a three-month pilot of a biometric credit card that enables customers to make contactless transactions of up to £100 (US$123) instead of the usual maximum value of £30 (US$37). The biometric credit cards include a built-in fingerprint sensor that the cardholder uses to verify their identity when making a