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Germany: Bank Plans Employee Trial with iPhone and microSDs
A limited number of Landesbank Berlin and Visa Europe employees in Berlin and Frankfurt, respectively, will trial mobile payments using microSD cards and a contactless attachment for the iPhone. The bank will issue the microSDs supporting a Visa payWave application, which employees will be able to tap for purchases of up to €25 (US$32.42) without PIN or signature–although there were few point-of-sale terminals that support payWave in Germany as of January of 2012. There will be an option in the iPhone app that would require the customer to enter a password on the phone before each payment. An announcement of the trial said Landesbank plans to “implement” mobile-payments with mobile phones nationwide next year, but the bank told NFC Times that such a rollout depends on availability of NFC phones and NFC-enabled SIM cards from mobile operators or similar devices from such companies as Apple or Google.
The trial is perhaps the first in Germany of contactless-mobile payment. There are few contactless point-of-sale terminals in Germany, however, and Visa said it is only hoping to announce the first German retailer to accept payWave early in 2012. Landesbank told NFC Times it has been in talks with four major German mobile operators about NFC trials, but they are not ready yet to test full NFC. But both operators and banks in Germany are interested in contactless and mobile payment. Visa Europe in Germany has announced six savings banks will begin issuing contactless EMV cards in 2012. The card network estimates there will be 500,000 payWave cards issued and 2,000 payWave acceptance locations in Germany by the end of this year.
* Trusted Service Manager: Defined loosely to include companies or other organizations securely distributing, provisioning and managing applications, generally over the air, on secure elements in NFC mobile phones; or licensing their platforms for this purpose.
N/A: Not available or not applicable.
Last update: Jan. 2012
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