Postal Services Continue To Expand Contactless Offer In Europe

Poste Italiane – the Italian postal service has announced that it will be introducing contactless payments to its stores in Milan in December 2012. The shops in Milan will be equipped with NFC-enabled payment solutions and customers will be able to pay through NFC-enabled phones. This service is available to customers of the postal service’s mobile service – PosteMobile – and bank account service – BancoPosta.

Poste Italiane is following the footsteps of the Post Office in the UK and La Poste in France. In the UK, the national postal service introduce contactless payments in June 2012, becoming the retailer with the most contactless payment points in the country – with 11,500 branches. It is the largest deployment of contactless technology in Europe and is expected to increase consumer awareness and usage and, through the Post Office network, put this technology within three miles of 99% of the UK population.

In France, La Poste pioneered its NFC offering in Nice, when the city was used for a trial by Citizy to become a contactless city. La Poste’s bank also offers contactless cards to its account holders, in partnership with Visa and MasterCard. Moreover, the French postal service is testing out a smart mailbox service in Paris which lets customers interact with their mailbox through NFC technology.