Dear Subscriber,

What an exciting end to the month! This week, we’ve had quarterly updates from Facebook, Twitter, PayPal and Apple. Apple’s conference call proved very interesting in particular. The company’s shares dropped after the company announced a 13% drop in quarterly revenue, the first time it’s happened in 13 years. However, on the bright side, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, was very upbeat about Apple Pay, saying the service gets a staggering one million new users every week.

Whilst Apple is having a less than stellar time, PayPal is off to a flying start in 2016 with profits up, revenue up and 4.5m new customer accounts on its books taking total users to 184m at the end of March. Elsewhere, Visa is making the most of the Road to Rio Olympics as it announced plans to promote wearable and mobile payments at the event by installing 4,000 contactless-enabled POS. We also cover stories on dominance of contactless cards and the travel industry missing a trick on mobile payments.

Happy reading and happy Bank Holiday Weekend!

Among the less than positive news such as declining iPhone sales and more significantly, declining revenue for first time in over a decade, Tim Cook was very upbeat about Apple Pay.

Visa looks to be making the most of the glorious payments opportunity presented by the 2016 Olympics in Rio by planning to launch 4,000 POS terminals and introduce new wearable and mobile payment methods.

Travel made up 15.5% of mobile transactions on global payments network Adyen in the first quarter of the year, according to a new report from the company.

PayPal is off to a flying start in 2016, with profits up, revenue up and 4.5m new customer accounts on its books taking total users to 184m at the end of March.

Of the two billion chip cards issued in 2015 around the world, 56% were contactless, said the Smart Payment Association (SPA), the trade body of the smart payments industry.