Nine Polish banks have confirmed plans to launch a mobilepayments service using contactless payments using Visa’s Host Card Emulationtechnology. Leading bank providers, ING Bank Śląski, mBank, Bank Millennium,Raiffeisen Polbank, eurobank, Getin Bank, Bank Polskiej Spółdzielczości andBank Smart will join Bank Zachodni WBK in deploying a HCE based mobile paymentservice.
With Polish consumers increasingly using contactlesstechnology (according to Visa Europe, close to 70% of Visa cards in the markethave contactless functionality and now 40% of all Visa payments are usingcontactless technology), the mobile payment service has a good chance of beingsuccessful and should pose another obstacle for the eventual launch of ApplePay in Europe.
Jeremy Nicholds, executive director for mobile for VisaEurope, commented on the use of Visa’s HCE technology saying, “Visa’s Cloud-based Mobile Payments canquickly be made available to a large group of consumers and provide afoundation for the bank to offer a wide range of innovative functionalities inthe future. Visa’s mobile contactless payment technologies have become anintegral part of our Polish members’ mobile banking strategies.”
Though getting consumers to switch spending from contactlesscards to their mobile phones may be difficult, this new service launched bynine leading Polish banks has all the components in place to be successfulmoving forward.
Overview by Tristan Hugo-Webb, Associate Director, Global Payments for Mercator Advisory Group
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