As part of the new NFC Experience at the GSMA Mobile World Congress, four partners have come together to deliver a mobile contactless payment experience.
CaixaBank, Gemalto, Telefónica and Visa Europe will deliver a payments application which will be offered to 3,500 delegates at Mobile World Congress, taking place February 25th-28th in Barcelona. The app, developed by Telefónica Digital, will allow delegates to make mobile contactless payments using a pre-paid card especially developed for mobile payments, which has been enabled to work with Visa’s contactless payment technology. The card is issued by MoneyToPay, the new subsidiary for the prepaid business created by CaixaBank.
Delegates will experience the service on an Xperia™ smartphone provided by Sony Mobile Communications, and using wallet technology developed by Telefónica Digital.
The app will come pre-loaded with €15, allowing delegates to make payments at contactless payment terminals across the Fira Gran Via. In addition, the app will allow payments in all “contactless” POS rolled out by CaixaBank around Barcelona, including more than 16,000 POS in stores, commercial centers and city markets, as well as 1,000 taxis.
“The GSMA is excited to launch the NFC Experience for Mobile World Congress 2013, as it provides attendees with the opportunity to experience first-hand the potential that NFC technology holds both throughout the Mobile World Congress venue and in Barcelona,” said Michael O’Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA. “We hope that all attendees will take the opportunity to experience the many benefits of NFC, from venue access to retail transactions to transport and much more.”
Sandra Alzetta, Senior Vice President at Visa Europe, said: “Contactless transaction numbers quadrupled across Europe in 2012 and will quadruple again this year. In the UK there are almost four million contactless transactions every month. There is a natural evolution from contactless cards to mobile devices and we’ve seen a fantastic response from the markets where this kind of service is commercially available.”
Miguel Ángel Pozuelo, head of new product and service development from CaixaBank said: “Innovation strategy is crucial for CaixaBank and the development of new payment products aimed at giving answers to all kinds of needs coming from its 13 million clients. Indeed, CaixaBank has promoted the creation of Money to Pay, Spain's first electronic money operator exclusively for the prepaid card sector, in order to boost new payment methods linked to technological development, such as NFC mobile devices and online wallets.”
“Bustling with activity and people jumping from meetings to demonstrations, MWC is the perfect environment for experiencing the speed and convenience of contactless services ”, said Jean-Claude Deturche, Senior Vice President Mobile Financial Services at Gemalto. “Gemalto is at the heart of 50 mobile NFC projects, with many of the world’s leading Mobile Operators, Banks, Retailers, Transport Operators and Service Providers. Global adoption is on its way with payment being one of the pillar services in the NFC ecosystem.”
Fernando Abella, Head of Telefónica Digital Spain, said: “Wallet technology from Telefónica Digital will enable our customers to perform payments with their mobile phone easily and securely. Telefónica is committed to delivering mobile payment capabilities to its customers all around Europe, including launching commercial NFC services in key markets such as Spain.”
The market potential for NFC is significant - nearly 1.5 billion SIM-based handsets will have been sold worldwide between 2010 and 2016, supporting transactions of more than $50 billion globally over the same period, and momentum is growing. The deployment of NFC-ready point of sales terminals is also set to expand dramatically, growing from 3.9 million in 2011 to 43.4 million in 2017, by which time 53 per cent of all point of sale terminals worldwide will be NFC-ready.