ADN’co Payments Insight – February 2014

Mobile card emulation casting a shadow on carriers’ business models…

• SPAIN – Bankinter unveils a contactless mobile payment concept based on single use virtual cards: its Mobile Virtual Card (MVC) might hit the market this year.
• INTERNATIONAL – Visa and MasterCard are supporting mobile card emulation and crafting dedicated specifications: soon to be released.

HCE-related articles have increasingly made the headlines since Android KitKat was released to market last November. Banks, manufacturers and card schemes seem to have understood its market potential. Using this technology, some banks have already decided to run counter to their rivals’ initiatives. They avoided SIM-centric approaches and circumvented mobile carriers by using their own system’s data storage.

The Spanish market has proved especially interested in this technology. In Madrid, a HCE-based contactless ticketing platform, called Ticktrack, is even underway.

New roles for day-to-day objects

• INTERNATIONAL – PayPal and Samsung presented a payment and transaction tracking app designed to run on the Samsung Gear 2 Smartwatch.
• UNITED STATES – Wallaby introduces a Google Glass app to accompany its multi-card loyalty product.

As the market of connected objects keeps growing, payments industry specialists are paying more attention to the opportunities it might bring them. Well-established manufacturers and app developers, including those used to launching mobile products, are now focusing on other innovative items with embedded payments features.

Their challenge is to promote mobility and hyper-connectivity in order to give everyday objects a new role.

Rentabiliweb: more authorisations and steady growth

• THE NETHERLANDS / EUROPE – Rentabiliweb just set up a subsidiary in the Netherlands and is seeking to broaden its range of services through applying for EMI and Credit Institution authorisations. 

One more Internet giant in retail stores

• INTERNATIONAL– Amazon appears to be on its way to designing a mobile POS system based on its Kindle Fire tablets and associated card readers.