Barclays’ South African subsidiary Absa has
launched the first live user trial of Near Field Communication
(NFC) technology on mobile phones in South Africa.
The trial will involve 500 of the bank’s own
staff members, operating in a live commercial environment, and will
start in mid-December.
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Head of Retail Markets at Absa, Arrie
Rautenbach, said, “Absa is the first institution in South Africa to
bring NFC capabilities with an EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa)
card payment application to a handset.”
Absa, in partnership with Mastercard, has
embedded its Paypass Tap and Go payment card on the handsets for
the trial, with the aim of allowing trial participants to load
funds into a prepaid store of value on a secure element on the
phone, at point of sale, through Absa Online or Absa ATMs.
The application on the phone aims to store
details of the commuter, the day and time, where he or
she entered and exited the transit system – and use this
information to calculate the fares.
The initial handset for mobile payment trials
will be Research In Motion’s Blackberry models. The Blackberry
device will be equipped with an NFC wireless chip.
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By GlobalDataThe mobile payment system will contain the
National Department of Transport data structure which, in future,
aims to facilitate more advanced payments in transit.
Deputy managing executive of Absa Digital
Banking, Adrian Vermooten, said that all the payment and NFC
services that are available on the handset will be accessed from
the mobile phone’s main menu, in addition to information about each
service and customer support.
Said Vermooten, “By simply tapping one’s phone
in front of a contactless NFC-enabled pay point, the value of the
transaction will instantly be debited from one’s bank account.”
According to Rautenbach, the trial paves the
way for consumer market utilisation of the mobile phone as a
payment device by using NFC technology.
“While this trial will facilitate low value
payments in retail and transit in early stages, we envision many
more exciting new forms of mobile payment in the future.”
Customer will benefit in terms
of faster transactions, shorter queues, increased levels of
security and the ability to electronically track spending habits,
through NFC, according to Absa.
Absa launched its ‘tap-and-go’
technology, earlier in November, that enables payments to be
made by means of tapping cards on a reader.
Vermooten said the NFC trial is going to
provide “key insights” which will prove “crucial to refining the
customer experience”, adding that in time to come, consumers will
store any type of payment cards in their mobile wallet on their
handsets, “and either pay online by tapping the phone on a
merchant’s reader or on a person-to-person basis.”
Rautenbach said Absa’s relationship with
Barclaycard has provided the lender with “inspiration and the
expertise that is necessary to make this new payment form a
reality”.
In July this year, Absa and Vodacom announced
the formation of a strategic alliance to accelerate the pace of
innovation in mobile financial services. One of the focus areas of
this alliance is NFC.
