Following the recent closure of bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, another bitcoin exchange company has been attacked by hackers. On March 3rd, Canada-based bitcoin exchange Flexcoin closed down after flaws in its software were discovered. A statement from Flexcoin’s website advises that the exchange was attached by hackers and 896 bitcoins were stolen, worth around US…
Mt Gox, one of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges, has gone offline. It has reportedly suffered a cyber attack which led to Mt Gox stopping Bitcoin transfers to external addresses on 7 February 2014. A loophole was discovered by thieves enabling them to trick the transaction process into sending double the correct number of Bitcoins. It is…
A major national campaign is being launched by Ireland’s Central Bank to persuade both businesses and the public to use online transactions instead of using cash and cheques. Ireland is the second biggest user of cheques in Europe, and also uses cash much more frequently than its neighbouring European countries. “The value of withdrawals from…
The People’s Bank of China has announced a 318% increase in mobile payment values in 2013 compared to 2012. It advised that 16.74bn mobile transactions with a value of 9.64tn Yuan (US$ 1.66tn) were processed during the period. Online payments made via computers grew by 28.9% year on year, totalling 1,061tn Yuan in 2013. Phone…
In an effort to restore some of the value of the Icelandic krona, entrepreneur Baldur Friggjar Odinsson has created Auroracoin, a virtual currency similar to the Bitcoin system, and intends to distribute digital coins to all 333,000 Icelandic citizens. The Auroracoin website describes the virtual currency as: “a cryptocurrency for Iceland. It is based on litecoin…
According to a report by Giesecke & Devrient, the use of pre-paid payment cards is quickly increasing in India. There are around 17 million pre-paid payment cards currently in use, compared to 316 million credit and debit cards, but the gap is steadily decreasing. There are many people in India who do not have an…
During 2013 Poland made almost 840 million contactless payments using Visa cards, making it the top country in Europe for Visa contactless payment transactions. There was an 11.3% growth in contactless payments, almost double the increase in the number of payments in general, including ATM withdrawals, which was 6.8%. Source: Warsaw Business Journal
Transport for London (TFL) has announced that London buses will no longer accept cash payments from this summer, though the exact date is yet to be confirmed. Contactless payments using cards were first introduced in December 2012 and since its introduction there has been a steady increase in the number of contactless payment transactions. Currently,…
El Corte Inglés, the Spanish department store, has installed thousands of contactless payment terminals for customers to make contactless card or mobile phone payments. With 5,200 of its terminals already replaced with the new Visa payment machines, the group predict that 60% of its terminals will have the new technology by the end of 2014.…
Australia’s Commonwealth Bank has made mobile payment technology available to its customers through the release of the new CommBank app and CommBank PayTag NFC sticker for iPhone. This follows the launch of the new CommBank apps and stickers for Android and Windows 8 platforms which were released in December. The technology is also in-built in…