Landesbank Berlin Testing NFC Payment in Germany
- Landesbank Berlin (LBB) is getting prepared to ease the adoption of mobile contactless payment in Germany based on NFC-compatible microSD chips and DeviceFidelity’s iPhone-dedicated iCaisse card readers.
- The Visa payWave-enabled chips will first be tested with the help of a limited number of employees of the bank and card network. All transactions above 25 euros will be PIN-secured. The customer will have to choose between an automatic payment mode (for less then 25 euros purchases), or a manual mode (requiring that a previously defined password be notified for each transaction).
- The card manufacturer and customisation specialist Swiss Post Solutions will also be taking part in these experiments.
- LBB claims it should be proposing mobile NFC payment in Germany by mid 2012.
- According to Landesbank Berlin, these tests are necessary and accounted for by the overall growth of the mobile market. Germany still has to catch up and only few acceptance points are available today: this may be hindering the development of contactless payment. Nevertheless, recent announcements may tend to illustrate that this country is speeding up the pace of contactless payment’s adoption.
- To this respect, in line with its EU-wide project, OSCar, Ingenico announced last November it would launch two payWave-compatible payment terminals at several German retail stores. End December, six German banks, including Landesbank Berlin, have spoken out their plan to deploy EMV-compatible Visa payWave solutions during H1 2012 (see November and December 2011 Insights).
- In Visa Europe’s assessments, Germany could represent 500,000 Visa payWave cards and 2,000 acceptance points by end 2012.