Amazon and others are rapidly rolling out contactless checkout: While the pandemic sparked interest in contactless technology, the tight labor market could lead more retailers to adopt the tools.

PayPal launched a softPOS solution that lets merchants accept contactless payments and can help PayPal gain more in-store volume.

Stripe will be the first company to enable contactless payments acceptance on merchant customers’ iPhones.

Why it’s worth watching: Apple’s latest enhancements address two key barriers to contactless payment adoption: acceptance and security. When asked what would make them more likely to use contactless payments more often, 29.1% of respondents said wider availability, and 24.7% said knowing that the transactions were safe and secure, per a 2021 Raydiant survey.

EU probing Apple Pay: Restricting access to key NFC technologies on iPhones prevents EU banks from providing payment solutions, limiting competition. Mounting scrutiny could alter the duopoly’s payments dominance.

Lockdowns, online shopping, and fear of germs during the pandemic have hastened the shift toward all types of digital payments. As a result, Gen Z has fully embraced electronic wallet services, contactless payments, peer-to-peer payment apps, and digital uses of credit, including buy now, pay later.

Did Google pay Apple to stay out of the search game? A new lawsuit claims so: Antitrust scrutiny heats up on Big Tech ballooning unchecked into trillion-dollar firms.

The pandemic accelerated payments industry digitization across the entire landscape, as merchants turned to ecommerce to keep doors open, consumers eschewed cash in favor of electronic and contactless payments, and payments technology providers rapidly developed and launched new solutions to keep up.

Shoppers’ pandemic-era quest for contactless payments has driven lasting gains: Over half of smartphone users will pay via mobile by 2025, and spending will grow nearly four times faster than the number of users. Here’s what will drive mobile proximity usage in the years to come:. Greater acceptance. Around two-thirds of merchants currently accept proximity payments.

Entrenched Contactless Payment Habits Keep Mobile Numbers Down. Contactless technology accounted for 27% of total payments in 2020, up 12% on an annual basis, per June 2021 UK Finance data.

It launched the standalone Google Wallet, and a new Chrome feature lets online shoppers convert their cards to virtual cards.

Small businesses (a previously untapped market for Apple) would likely be interested in the offering because it would let them accept contactless payments without incurring additional hardware costs. This would let Apple capitalize on non-Apple Pay transactions.

The etailer is working on a new point-of-sale solution for non-Amazon merchants with features like contactless enablement, customer analytics, and inventory management.

Despite the drop in overall card volume, contactless card payments rose in 2020—consumers hoped these transactions would reduce the risk of virus transfer at the physical point-of-sale. The number of contactless card payments hit 3.7 billion in 2020, an annual increase of 172.3% compared with 2019’s 121.2% YoY growth.