FINTECH

WAMD onboards 30% of Kuwait’s banked population in first 3 months; real-time transactions powered by KNET and ACI Worldwide up more than 12x since 2024 By Godson Umejiego, Bureau Chief, The Americas and Ron Chen, Bureau Chief, Asia An original innovator in global payments technology, ACI Worldwide (ACIW),  and KNET, Kuwait’s national electronic banking company, today announced that WAMD, Kuwait’s real-time payment system, recorded significant growth in the number of transactions processed since its launch in June of 2024, making WAMD one of the world’s most rapidly adopted real-time payment initiatives, Cyber...

By Sarah Clark Close to nine in ten (87.1%) of all card payments made in Ireland last year were contactless and more than half of those were made using an NFC mobile phone, Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) reports. Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) “Over 1.5bn contactless point of sale (POS) payments, valued at €26.7 billion(US$29.3billion), were made in shops, restaurants and other retail outlets in 2024,” the organisation says. “We can see from today’s report that contactless payments continue to be very popular with Irish consumers, accounting...