A second of Australia’s big four banks, Westpac, said it will finally be ready to launch its long-planned NFC contactless payments service with Visa using embedded chips in Samsung phones by the end of April, the bank told NFC Times.
Westpac joins Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which launched on embedded chips in the Samsung Galaxy S4 in December with MasterCard. Both banks told NFC Times they plan to offer the service on embedded chips in the Samsung Galaxy S5, which will be released in Australia April 11. As NFC Times has reported, Australia is one of the few markets globally where Samsung is including an embedded chip in its new flagship smartphone.
The Westpac launch would be the first under Visa’s agreement with Samsung–announced more than a year ago–to enable its payWave application on chips in major Samsung devices.