Alibaba, JPMorgan, Nets and Barclaycard in payments this week
- Alibaba has unveiled a facial recognition system which can be used to pay for purchases at a fast food restaurant
- JPMorgan Chase has been awarded a patent for the technology that allows mobile applications to talk to each other, despite the fact that the process is already commonplace in today’s smartphones. The decision to award the patent for a ‘System and method for communication among mobile applications’, which was filed in 2013, has been nominated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), for its Stupid Patent of the Month award
- Nets is rumoured to be close to a private equity buy-out that would value the company at more than $5bn. US firm Hellman & Friedman is believed to be a potential buyer
- Barclaycard has launched the world’s first car key with built-in contactless payment technology. The car key is currently only available with DS Automobiles, which is owned by Citroen
- WeChat Pay has been accepted as a payment method by Apple
- Kim Dotcom, the internet entrepreneur, has demonstrated Bitcache, a new micro-payments service designed to let people charge small amounts of money for any content they create. Mr Dotcom, who is currently fighting extradition to the US to stand trial for copyright infringement and fraud, claims that Bitcache will reduce online piracy by letting people pay for content from anywhere in the world
- Mastercard has announced a trial of the use of smartphones as payment terminals with small businesses in Poland
- PayPal has launched the PayPal Cashback Mastercard in partnership with Synchrony Financial. The card offers 2% cashback with no annual fee.
- American Express is to launch a new credit card option in the US that will allow customers to borrow for big purchases like furniture or airline tickets, while separating those balances from everyday items like cups of coffee. Using the new option, as many as 10 purchases of at least $100 each can be pushed into the provider’s instalment plan service. Another new card feature will allow cardholders to immediately pay for small purchases from their bank accounts
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