Nine Polish banks have confirmed plans to commercially launch Visa cloud-based mobile contactless payment services from early next year, re-enforcing Poland’s reputation as a hotbed for innovation in digital payment services.
Visa and nine Polish banks are pushing cloud-based mobile payments
Banking providers ING Bank Śląski, mBank, Bank Millennium, Raiffeisen Polbank, eurobank, Getin Bank, Bank Polskiej Spółdzielczości and Bank SMART will join Bank Zachodni WBK in rolling out services utilising Visa’s cloud-based payment specifications, enabling customers with payment apps utilising host card emulation (HCE) functionality to make contactless payments using an NFC-enabled Android smartphone.
The banks embracing Visa’s mobile contactless payment services point to the ease and intuitiveness of using a smartphone to make contactless payments, as well as potential of mobile contactless payments in paving the way for additional innovations in how customers use their mobile phone to manage their finances and spending.
Jeremy Nicholds, executive director for mobile for Visa Europe, said: “The high number of banks working to deploy Visa mobile payments highlights the sector’s immense interest in the service. Visa’s cloud-based mobile payments can quickly be made available to a large group of consumers and provide a foundation for the bank to offer a wide range of innovative functionalities in the future. Visa’s mobile contactless payment technologies have become an integral part of our Polish members’ mobile banking strategies.”
Poland has been extremely enthusiastic in embracing contactless payment technology and is already Visa’s largest market in Europe in terms of contactless transaction volumes. Close to 70% of Visa cards in the market have contactless functionality, with the technology accounting for more than 40% of all Visa payments in Poland. More than 75% of all in-store POS terminals support contactless payment, with plans in place for all Polish POS terminals to support the technology by the end of 2017. In total, Visa has now enabled over 2.1 million contactless terminals across Europe.
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