The days of searching a bag or drawer at home for supermarket loyalty cards, paper coupons or gym membership identification are over thanks to a new mobile app available from Vodafone. Customers can now electronically load all their plastic cards straight into Vodafone’s mobile wallet located on their smartphone.
Vodafone signed an agreement with Austrian software company, Bluesource, to provide a Vodafone Wallet version of its ‘mobile-pocket’ app – one of the largest and most popular customer cards and shopping apps in Europe. This service is free of charge to use and will sit within the Vodafone mobile wallet. It will be progressively rolled out in countries where Vodafone has already launched its mobile wallet, starting in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain from this month with other countries expected to follow during this year.
The app, which has been downloaded by more than one million users, allows a customer to load their physical plastic cards onto their smartphone by either scanning or typing in the number. Online templates already exist for a large number of loyalty cards from more than 1,500 leading service providers, including retailers, event organisers, transport companies and advertisers. If a user can’t find the card they want, they can create a new template on their phone.
Stefano Parisse, Group Consumer Services Director of Vodafone, said: “Our customers want to take advantage of as many club, retail and membership offers as possible, but the number of plastic cards often exceed the capacity of their physical wallets.
“Vodafone’s mobile wallet, when used with the mobile pocket app, removes that problem by allowing a user to load a limitless number of loyalty cards directly onto their phone. Participating retailers also benefit since they will be able to send vouchers and special offers directly to the Vodafone mobile wallets of their regular customers.”
The app will fit inside the mobile wallet alongside Vodafone SmartPass, a Visa-based payment card that can be used to purchase goods and services at contactless point of sale terminals across Europe. In addition to Vodafone SmartPass, launched in 2013, the company expects to add a number of other virtual stored value cards, transport tickets and coupons from third-party service providers to its mobile wallet.
Based on near field communications (NFC)-enabled technology, the Vodafone mobile wallet is available to use on a number of leading smartphone devices from Samsung, Sony and HTC and that range is expected to expand rapidly during 2014.
A user can either download the mobile wallet to a mobile phone or via a home computer. In addition, personal details are stored directly on the latest mobile SIM card, making it very secure. If a user’s smartphone is either lost or stolen, then the contents of their mobile wallet are covered by the same anti-fraud protection measures offered by financial services and all details on the SIM card can be wiped clean remotely.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
