Four companies partner for mobile payments at Mobile World Congress
18 February, 2013
category: NFC
Four partners have come together to deliver mobile contactless payment experience at Mobile World Congress. 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 Feb. 25-28 in Barcelona.
The app, developed by Telefónica Digital, will enable 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. MoneyToPay, the new subsidiary for the prepaid business created by CaixaBank, issues the card.
Delegates will experience the service on an Xperia smart phone provided by Sony Mobile Communications and using wallet technology developed by Telefónica Digital. The app will come pre-loaded with €15, enabling delegates to make payments at contactless payment terminals across the Fira Gran Via. In addition, the app will allow payments at any of the 16,000 Visa contactless payment terminals in stores, commercial centers and city markets, as well as 700 taxis installed by CaixaBank around Barcelona.
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, according to Strategic Analytics. Further, the deployment of NFC-ready point of sales terminals is set to expand dramatically, growing from 3.9 million in 2011 to 43.4 million in 2017, with 53% of all point of sale terminals worldwide being NFC-ready, according to Berg Insight.