La Caixa Gets Spanish Gas Stations Ready for NFC

• La Caixa and the Spanish gas station network Repsol are getting ready for new contactless deployments: to this day, 140 locations in Barcelona and in the Balearic Islands have been equipped. These areas have already been taken care of by La Caixa regarding cardholder equipment. Repsol owns over 40% market shares, and is especially fond of this technology because it has to manage high frequentation levels (more than one million customers per day). Its network includes more than 3,600 points of sale.

• Cardholders, for their part, benefit from both EMV compliant media and CaixaProtect protection against fraudulent usage of their means of payment, regardless of the transactional context (in stores, online or by mobile). La Caixa has already issued 950,000 cards and made 19,000 compatible POS devices available.

Notre analyse

• Repsol, is especially turned towards innovative solutions on its specific market (and has already launched several dedicated cards). It now leads the way through committing to contactless developments and will be the first IBEX35 oil company to adopt this technology.

• La Caixa has been focussing on contactless efforts for over a year through renewing its Spanish ATM and POS estates, notably in Barcelona (see April 2011 and June 2012 Insights).