Visa’s Mobile Payments Tests in Poland
- mBank and MultiBank, in partnership with Visa Europe, are testing a mobile payment service relying on Apple’s IPhone. This service is based on Visa payWave stickers as well as on a dedicated Visa app (for download on the App Store). Non PIN-secure payments are limited to 50 zlotys (12 euros).
- Prior pilot tests have been conducted end 2011 and only concerned the employees of these two banks and a limited number of customers. This experiment focused on another technology: Wireless Dynamics’s iCarte devices for IPhone 3 (iCarte 110) and 4 (iCarte 420).
- During the second test phase, partaking customers can also enter a competition and maybe win an iCarte accessory.
- mBank and MultiBank are carrying on their experiments –with the help of Visa– and, for this larger scale deployment, have opted for Visa payWave NFC stickers: less expensive to set up than the primarily selected iCarte devices, they may improve customers’ adoption of contactless payment.
- We may remind that the removable iCarte set to be attached to an iPhone works with a dedicated Visa Mobile app. This set includes an antenna and a Secure Element to store the mobile virtual Visa card; this card is activated through the app to enable payment. To make a transaction, the customer has to launch the app and bring his phone closer to the NFC-compatible acceptance terminal.
- The Polish banking sector is betting on its customers’ interest in new technologies. For instance, BRE Bank provided figures reveal that 35% of connections to the MultiBank platform have been conducted with Apple terminals, and, for mBank, this rate would reach 20%. The Polish market is also one of the most opened to mobiles technologies and now counts 35,000 NFC-compatible terminals: this figure might even increase to 200,000 terminals by 2015.