Starting with the second quarter of 2015, Vodafone customers in European markets will be able to add bank cards to their Vodafone Wallet and use smartphones to pay for goods and services at contactless terminals, it was announced today in a press release.
This service, which requires a Vodafone NFC SIM, will be supported on a wide range of Android smartphones. To use the service, customers will:
input their bank cards to the Vodafone Wallet app, where an alias of each card is stored securely in the Vodafone NFC SIM;
confirm ownership of the card using Verified by Visa authentication;
pay by tapping their phones against a contactless point-of-sale terminal; and
check their mobile payment transaction history using their phones, wherever they are.
Payments are automatically debited from the selected bank cards, which are protected with a user-defined 4-digit PIN for higher value payments.
Mark Ritzmann, Head of mCommerce at Vodafone Group said: “The digital wallet just took another step forward. With a few clicks, customers will be able to add payment cards to their Vodafone Wallet and use Android smartphones to pay at contactless terminals. Thanks to our agreements with Visa and Carta Worldwide, using bank cards stored on Vodafone Wallet is fast, secure and simple.”
Jeremy Nicholds, Executive Director Mobile at Visa Europe, said: “We are really excited to bring this new payment service together with Vodafone, which will enable Visa credit and debit cards to be used for mobile contactless payments. This initiative is part of Visa’s strategy to accelerate mobile payments and make it easier for banks to enable their cards to make payments on mobile phones and for consumers to pay in the most secure and convenient way.”
Carta Worldwide has partnered with Vodafone to provide the payment card enabling technology. Brian Semkiw, CEO of Carta Worldwide, said: “We are thrilled to partner with Vodafone to make mobile payments the most simple, convenient and secure way to pay. Our Next Generation platform is built to provide the highest security and reliability standards. At the same time, the flexibility of our platform has allowed us to develop this innovative service with Vodafone in record time.”
Vodafone Wallet is currently available in Germany, Spain, the UK, Italy and The Netherlands. Customers can already add loyalty cards into the Vodafone Wallet, as well as pay with Vodafone SmartPass that was launched in partnership with Visa in 2013. This evolution of the Vodafone Wallet is part of the Vodafone mCommerce strategy designed to provide a mobile alternative to coins, banknotes and plastic cards.
Carta is an award-winning leader in digital transaction processing enablement technologies, including tokenization, digital credential management and provisioning, delivering new and innovative financial products for the digital world. Carta empowers banks, MNOs, OEMs, merchants and others to enable existing cardholder accounts or issue new financial products for proximity and cloud-based transactions quickly and easily.
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:
