Polish Bank Launches NFC Payments

By Steve Beecroft

One of Poland’s largest banks, Bank Zachodni WBK, have committed to launching the country's first NFC payment scheme. This new product offering, which launches next month, is backed by Visa's payWave solution and provides 500 customers with the new Samsung, known as the Avila in Poland, S5230 NFC mobile phone and up to 2 million customers with a contactless card with the option to upgrade to the NFC service via their own NFC enabled mobile phone.

Specially selected customers in Poznan, Warsaw and Wroclaw will be able to make low value purchases at 4,000 retailers in the three cities. This project is viewed by the bank, Visa and the mobile network provider Polkomtel as the first stage of a large roll out of the NFC capability. when interviewed Aleksander Naganowski of Polkomtel's new business development department, commented "We did not launch another trial, this is a soft-launch of a commercial service," he said. "This project will not be shut down. We will not take back the phones and (SIM) cards. Moreover, once more handsets are available on the market, we are ready to react quickly and enlarge the scale of the rollout." (NFC Times are the source of comments)

BZ WBK have a reputation of being first to market with emerging technologies, introducing new channels and innovative solutions that provide their customers with choice, enhanced service and richer customer experience. In 2008 it issues students with Poland's first ever payWave card and have extended that product to over 150k customers.

The Polish payWave card rollout will gather steam later this year when Poland’s largest financial institution, PKO Bank Polski, is scheduled to begin adding the payWave application to more than 6 million Visa debit cards. This will bring the number of Polish banks issuing the Visa payWave product to 7 and promote Poland to the second largest European adopter of the solution after the UK.

Consulting Smart Ltd provide specialist consultancy on the design and deployment of NFC technologies. For more information on how we can help your organisation realise the full benefits of NFC please see www.consultingsmart.co.uk or email Steve Beecroft, Smart Technologies Consultant onsbeecroft@consultingsmart.co.uk