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Poland: T-Mobile to Roll Out NFC With Multiple Banks
T-Mobile launch of NFC commercially in Poland before the end of October, 2012, made it the country’s first such launch. Users are able to tap at a growing number of MasterCard PayPass-enabled terminals in the country. Multiple banks are expected to be part of the project.
Both T-Mobile and Orange Poland, which plans a Nov. 1, 2012 launch of NFC, hope to tap into the growing infrastructure of contactless payment terminals that number about 90,000 throughout the country. MasterCard Worldwide is playing a key part in both launches. More banks are expected to join the T-Mobile project, including BRE Bank, Millennium bank and Citibank.
* 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.
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Last update: Jan. 2013
T-Mobile Poland confirmed it had signed up 5,500 “users” for its NFC-enabled wallet as of early January, a little more than two months after launching the service.
The telco, which launched NFC services in late October, disclosed the number of users in announcing that two more banks, Getin Bank and a sister financial institution, Noble Bank, had joined its MyWallet service.
As of late January 2013, that brought to four the number of banks issuing MasterCard PayPass payment applications for T-Mobile Poland SIM cards. The other two banks are Raifeissen Polbank, formerly known as Polbank EFG; and mBank, which is owned by BRE Bank; a T-Mobile Poland spokesman told NFC Times.
The 5,500 is believed to be the number of NFC SIM cards the telco has issued, not the number of subscribers who use the mobile-payment services. The latter figure is believed to be much lower. But the spokesman told NFC Times that the 5,500 “user” signups for the telco’s MyWallet service were better than expected after a little more than two months.
T-Mobile Poland, also known as PTC locally, has a total of 15.5 million subscribers. The service is only available to postpaid subscribers.
The spokesman said the telco hasn’t released actual usage numbers for the NFC applications. Subscribers with an NFC SIM and any of eight NFC handsets certified by MasterCard that the telco has put on sale can tap to pay anywhere PayPass is accepted.
That includes about 100,000 point-of-sale terminals in Poland, which represents roughly one-third of all POS terminals in the country–one of the highest penetrations rates of contactless terminals anywhere.
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