Payments partners confirmed for GSMA’s NFC Experience

Payments partners confirmed for GSMA’s NFC Experience

CaixaBank, Gemalto, Telefónica and Visa Europe deliver contactless mobile payments experience at MWC 2013

Amsterdam, Feb 18, 2013–As part of the new NFC Experience at 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 25-28th 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 at any of the 16,000 Visa contactless payment terminals in stores, commercial centres and city markets, as well as 700 taxis installed by CaixaBank around Barcelona.

“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 now more than 2.5 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 period¹, and momentum is growing. 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 per cent of all point of sale terminals worldwide being NFC-ready².

¹ Source: Strategy Analytics
² Source: Berg Insight

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About Gemalto

Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) is the world leader in digital security with 2011 annual revenues of €2 billion and more than 10,000 employees operating out of 74 offices and 14 Research & Development centers, located in 43 countries.

We are at the heart of the rapidly evolving digital society. Billions of people worldwide increasingly want the freedom to communicate, travel, shop, bank, entertain and work–anytime, everywhere–in ways that are enjoyable and safe. Gemalto delivers on their expanding needs for personal mobile services, payment security, authenticated cloud access, identity and privacy protection, eHealthcare and eGovernment efficiency, convenient ticketing and dependable machine-to-machine (M2M) applications.

Gemalto develops secure embedded software and secure products which we design and personalize. Our platforms and services manage these secure products, the confidential data they contain and the trusted end-user services they enable. Our innovations enable our clients to offer trusted and convenient digital services to billions of individuals.

Gemalto thrives with the growing number of people using its solutions to interact with the digital and wireless world.

For more information visit http://www.gemalto.com, http://www.justaskgemalto.com, http://blog.gemalto.com, or follow @gemalto on Twitter.

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