As part of the new NFC Experience at Mobile World Congress, four partners have come together to deliver a mobile contactless payment experience.
CaixaBank, Gemalto, Telefónica and Visa Europe will deliver a payments application which will be offered to 3,500 delegates at Mobile World Congress, taking place February 25-28th in Barcelona. The app, developed by Telefónica Digital, will allow delegates to make mobile contactless payments using a pre-paid card especially developed for mobile payments, which has been enabled to work with Visa’s contactless payment technology. The card is issued by MoneyToPay, the new subsidiary for the prepaid business created by CaixaBank. Delegates will experience the service on an Xperia smartphone provided by Sony Mobile Communications, and using wallet technology developed by Telefónica Digital.
Sandra Alzetta, Senior Vice President at Visa Europe, said: “Contactless transaction numbers quadrupled across Europe in 2012 and will quadruple again this year. In the UK there are now more than 2.5 million contactless transactions every month. There is a natural evolution from contactless cards to mobile devices and we’ve seen a fantastic response from the markets where this kind of service is commercially available.” The app will come pre-loaded with €15, allowing delegates to make payments at contactless payment terminals across the Fira Gran Via. In addition, the app will allow payments at any of the 16,000 Visa contactless payment terminals in stores, commercial centres and city markets, as well as 700 taxis installed by CaixaBank around Barcelona.
“Bustling with activity and people jumping from meetings to demonstrations, MWC is the perfect environment for experiencing the speed and convenience of contactless services,” said Jean-Claude Deturche, Senior Vice President Mobile Financial Services at Gemalto.
While Fernando Abella, Head of Telefónica Digital Spain, continues: “Wallet technology from Telefónica Digital will enable our customers to perform payments with their mobile phone easily and securely. Telefónica is committed to delivering mobile payment capabilities to its customers all around Europe, including launching commercial NFC services in key markets such as Spain.”
The market potential for NFC is significant – nearly 1.5 billion SIM-based handsets will have been sold worldwide between 2010 and 2016, supporting transactions of more than $50 billion globally over the same period*, and momentum is growing. Further, the deployment of NFC-ready point of sales terminals is set to expand dramatically, growing from 3.9 million in 2011 to 43.4 million in 2017, with 53 per cent of all point of sale terminals worldwide being NFC-ready**.
* Source: Strategy Analytics** Source: Berg Insight
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