Barclaycard is introducing bPay Loop, a small case comprising a contactless chip, so that wearable owners can transform their existing watches and fitness bands into vehicles for contactless payments, highlighting a new commerce opportunity. The Loop case can be slid onto any consumer’s fitness band or watch buckle, enabling that individual to make contactless payments totaling £30 and under at 400,000 locations across Britain. The new device rollout comes on the heels of several financial marketers’ recent innovations within the wearable industry, suggesting that their popularity and potential has not yet hit its peak.

One of the biggest buzzwords of 2016 within the retail customer experience realm has been the steadfast advancement of Internet of Things technology, with IoT increasingly a focus of topic at conference and summits. To get some insight on where IoT is today and where it may be in the future retail customer experience Retail Customer Experience reached out to Kevin Meagher, former VP and general manager of Lowe's IoT Smart Home initiative. He led the program, including the development and deployment of connected products and services through stores. He also founded Intamac Systems, a U.K. company, providing a cloud …

Speaking to Android Police, a reliable source has told us that Google is currently building two Android Wear devices - possibly Nexus-branded - for release some time after the latest Nexus phones are announced. One watch will be larger, sportier, and more fully-featured (LTE, GPS, heart rate), the other will be smaller and lack the aforementioned mobile data and GPS. We give this rumor a confidence level of 9 out of 10. We are extremely confident Google is in the process of prototyping these in-house Wear devices, and have confirmation of their existence from multiple sources. We are subtracting a point from our confidence because …

After proving its worth in the e-commerce sector, Alibaba seems set to move into the automobile industry with the announcement of a smart car at an event held in Hongzhou, China. The car, named RX5, was under development and testing for over a year. The tech giant partnered with the country’s largest automaker, SAIC Motor Corp., to make the ‘internet car’. Smart cars, considered the future of automobile energy, are affiliated to an operating system (OS) which serves as the second engine. Till now, some cars were able to access internet using third party software and apps, but with the RX5, Alibaba plans to give …

Heineken is adding fizz to mobile loyalty with the Heineken Live application, which offers users a chance to receive different rewards experiences, such as VIP event tickets, each time they visit one of the brand’s beacon-equipped venues. According to reports, the beer marketer has installed Bluetooth beacons in 120 of its locations across New Zealand, giving locals the opportunity to win big-ticket items such as helicopter transport to a special event and food and beverage vouchers each time they stop by a branded outlet. 

South Korea's LG Electronics Inc said on Wednesday it will work with German carmaker Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) to jointly develop a connected car platform to enable vehicles to communicate with external devices. LG, in a statement, said it and Volkswagen will work to jointly develop over "the next few years" technologies allowing drivers to control and monitor devices in their homes such as lights and security systems, as well as in-vehicle entertainment technologies and an alerting system for drivers providing "recommendations" based on real-time situations. Automakers and technology companies have been forming partnerships in recent years, as the …

Automaker BMW Group is looking to put street-ready autonomous vehicles into production by 2021 with the creation of an open platform with technology partners. BMW Group, along with collaborators Intel and Mobileye, sees the potential autonomous cars hold to make driving safer and easier, with implications for highway driving as well as ridesharing in denser city streets. While many automakers and consumers still see sophisticated self-driving vehicles as a distant dream, BMW is aiming to make them a reality sooner rather than later.

It was a close run contest – but the Netherlands beat South Korea to announcing a nationwide network for the Internet of Things (IoT) by four days. On June 30, KPN announced the deployment of a network based on the LoRa standard, which went live in November 2015 in Rotterdam and The Hague, with a rapid rollout beginning in early 2016, while on July 4 SK Telecom unveiled its grand plans for a nationwide LPWAN (low power wide area network) LoRa IoT network. For the Netherlands, KPN already has 1.5 million ‘devices’ connected to the network and this figure is …

Thousands of web-connected CCTV cameras and webcams have been taken over by hackers to carry out cyber attacks on government department websites and online banks. The network of compromised cameras was uncovered by researchers at security firm Arbor Networks, who reported that large scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks took down websites by flooding them with traffic. The botnet has been assembled by the notorious hacker collective Lizard Squad, best known for taking down the Xbox Live and Playstation gaming networks, as well as knocking North Korea’s Internet offline in 2014 using its LizardStresser DDoS tool.

Smart vending machines are an excellent example of how the “Internet of Things” (IoT) can affect business models and revenue flow. The vending industry is going through a sea of change. The access to data that is generated by connected devices has changed the way companies can operate and the way in which they generate revenues. Constant connectivity allows companies to offer customers a product utility as a service, as seen in vending machines. With user customization, improved security, smart payments and continuous monitoring of inventory and consumption patterns, opportunities for vending machines to dispense new products in more profitable …