MasterCard has recently partnered with T-Mobile and Orange in Poland to launch contactless mobile payments in the country. T-Mobile and MasterCard announced they will offer customers mobile payments based on NFC technology from 29 October 2012 in Poland. The offer will be launched with four banks and available as part of the MyWallet service and is one of the first advanced solutions commercially implemented in Europe that allows an integration of full functionality of debit and credit card, as well as others services with the phone. MasterCard, Orange Polska and mBank announced they will be introducing Orange Cash in Poland from November 2012.
To date, Poland is the most advanced PayPass country in Europe with more than 10% of all MasterCard and Maestro transactions tapped. This will change with ING and ABN AMRO’s migrating to PayPass cards in the Netherlands, but the country remains a key player. According to IDC’s Michal Wlasenko Poland is already a world leader in contactless payment availability “In just three years, between 2009 and 2012, banks issued 13.4 million cards (40 percent of all cards present in the market), which consist mostly of debit cards with the option for contactless payment enabled,” he said. “At the same time, the installed base of contactless payment-enabled points of sale (POS) reached 70,000 in 2012 (around 30 percent of all POS terminals) — one of the highest per capita level across EU,” he added.
Poland is also a contactless champion in other areas. In the summer of 2012 First Data and the Warsaw Transport Authority announced the introduction of the first ticket machines to accept contactless payments on public transport in Warsaw. The contactless-enabled ticket machines came into operation in June and were quickly put to use when hundreds of thousands of soccer fans visited Warsaw for the ‘Euro 2012’ European Football Championships. “Contactless payments in Poland continue to grow rapidly,” said Janusz Diemko, managing director of First Data’s business in Poland. “We believe that customer-friendly initiatives such as this, which demonstrate the benefits of contactless functionality, will contribute to the further development of electronic payments in Poland.” Earlier in the year First Data had introduced contactless payments at parking meters in Krakow.
Already in 2011, First Data uncovered that 57% of the Polish population were ready to use contactless cards. NFC could change the country’s lack of love for card payments and cashless transactions. Expensive transaction fees exclude many from offering card payments. T-Mobile’s new NFC offering in contrast is free – an incentive that could extend cashless payments to smaller retailers.
