Visa Europe, mBank and MultiBank launch mobile payments project for Apple iPhone users in Poland
Participants given iCarte accessory to enable them to use their Apple device for contactless payments at point of sale terminals
Visa Europe and its partners, mBank and MultiBank, today launched a project to bring NFC mobile payments to Apple iPhone users in Poland.
Participants in the project will be given the iCarte clip-in accessory created by Wireless Dynamics inc. and Visa Europe to attach to their third generation iPhone, or an iCarte case to use with their fourth generation device. Once they have downloaded the companion Visa Mobile application and associated the device with their bank card, they will be able to use their smartphone in the same way they use contactless card payments today to make payments of up to the value of 50 zloty (approx. €12) without needing to enter their PIN*.
Poland has a rapidly maturing contactless payment infrastructure covering 35,000 enabled retailer point of sale terminals, so consumers are already benefitting from faster contactless payments. Thanks to the Visa Cards Accepted Everywhere programme, the number of contactless terminals will top 200,000 by the end of 2015. The latest project signals the start of a broader contactless payments programme for consumers that will bring the technology to more devices. The project will also assess how solutions such as the iCarte accessory can bring mobile payments to older smartphones that are not equipped with NFC technology, which is a key barrier for the industry.
“mBank and MultiBank are the first to put iPhone mobile payments into action in Poland, using the Visa Mobile contactless application,” said Gosia O’Shaughnessy, Visa Europe Senior Vice President, General Manager for Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia. “Contactless payments using devices such as the iPhone are fundamental to Visa Europe’s strategy for robust development of mobile payments. By testing contactless mobile payments on a project basis such as this, we can perfect the technology to offer ultimate customer ease of use and convenience.”
“We are launching the mobile payments pilot for holders of iPhone devices because it is from these devices that our clients log into our transaction service most frequently. Our statistics show that as much as 35% of all log-ins to MultiBank are from Apple handsets. At mBank, too, this proportion is high, running at 20%,” explains Pawe? Kucharski, Director for Marketing and Retail Banking Business Development of BRE Bank. “The solution provided by Visa makes it possible to learn the new form of payments for a growing number of users, and simultaneously it adds another important functionality to the popular iPhone,” Kucharski adds.
The first stage of the project, which will run for three months, will see the mobile payment services become available to MultiBank and mBank’s customers and employees. After the initial deployment, invitations to test the solution at a second stage will be sent to those who entered a competition via the banks’ websites.