Visa payWave Making Progress in Germany
- Visa payWave contactless payment should be rolled out in Germany starting H1 2012 by six banks: BW Bank, comdirect, DKB, Landesbank Berlin, TARGOBANK and Volkswagen Bank. This announcement shows that the acceptance of contactless payments is making progress in a country currently rather unfamiliar with these technologies.
- According to Visa Europe, these developments fit in a strategy designed to stress the deployment of innovative solutions as the implementation of EMV in Germany is almost completed.
- Transactions amounting less than 25 euros will not require any PIN code or signature; beyond this amount, one of the other method will be required for payment validation.
- Germany, in its turn, is heading towards the deployment of contactless technologies: this disclosure follows Ingenico’s recent announcement regarding the launch of payWave-compatible payment terminals (Telium2 series) at German merchants. This approach also fits in the different EU-wide Open Standards for Cards (OSCar) pilot experiments now under development by this very same player to favour the acceptance of several kinds of cards (smart cards, mag-stripe and contactless cards) in the entire SEPA zone (see November 2011 Insight).
- According to Visa Europe, 54 of its banking members have already issued over 25 million Visa payWave cards and almost 175,000 terminals are now equipped in Europe. The player counts on 30 million cards in circulation by the end of 2011 and 50 million by end 2012. We should note that the UK market remains the most mature one regarding contactless acceptance as 17 million cards and 75,000 compatible POS terminals are now available in this country.