Recently Natwest and The Royal Bank of Scotland have announced the launch of their NFC mobile payment solution. The solution was initially trialed with 1,000 customers but will soon be available to all customers owning an iPhone 4. TouchPay is being supported by Giesecke & Devrient providing Trusted Service Manager (TSM) service, data generation for payment applications and fulfilment of iCarte devices.
The trial is showing promise as more than 9,000 RBS customers have registered to participate in the trial over a period of three days. Ben Green, Head of Mobile at RBS, comments: “TouchPay has proven incredibly popular and shows that our customers want more flexible and convenient ways to pay. The TouchPay service means that our customers need only to carry their smartphone with them to make payments and manage their finances wherever they are. Giesecke & Devrient is a strategic partner of RBS and their knowledge and experience in delivering secure NFC services has been invaluable to ensuring the success of Touchpay.”
The UK is one of the largest markets for NFC in Europe. This summer the Olympics provided an incentive for many retailers to adopt contactless payments. The country’s postal service is now the retailer with the most contactless payment points in the country – with 11,500 branches and is the largest deployment of contactless technology in the country.
