Cityzi has been targeting different channels to promote contactless payments in the French cities of Caen, Nice, and Strasbourg. The cities’ buses, newspapers and billboards are covered in Cityzi adverts showing how to use the mobile contactless solution. Radio shows too have been targeted.
Cityzi is a government-sponsored initiative to promote NFC payments in France. Different cities were chosen to trial contactless payments and received NFC-enabled mobile phones for citizens, POS terminals for retailers and public services such as transport. In Strasbourg over 2000 retailers accept contactless payments and in Nice the number is over a thousand. In 2012 the number of Cityzi phones in France should reach 2.5 million.
NFC payments got an additional boost with a “mobile contactless payments week” organized by the European association of mobile payments, local authorities, banks as well as the mobile operators involved in the project. Between the 12 and 17 of November Strasbourg citizens were able to try out different mobile payment options by riding on a bus across town.
