Vodafone customers will soon be able to add bank cards to their Vodafone Wallet and use smartphones to pay for goods and services at contactless terminals, it was announced today. Following new agreements with Visa and Carta Worldwide, bank card payments via Vodafone Wallet will be enabled in European markets from the second quarter of 2015 onwards.
This service, which requires a Vodafone NFC SIM, will be supported on a wide range of Android smartphones. To use the service, customers will:
- input their bank cards to the Vodafone Wallet app, where an alias of each card is stored securely in the Vodafone NFC SIM;
- confirm ownership of the card using Verified by Visa authentication;
- pay by tapping their phones against a contactless point-of-sale terminal; and
- check their mobile payment transaction history using their phones, wherever they are.
Payments are automatically debited from the selected bank cards, which are protected with a user-defined 4-digit PIN for higher value payments.
Mark Ritzmann, Head of mCommerce at Vodafone Group said: “The digital wallet just took another step forward. With a few clicks, customers will be able to add payment cards to their Vodafone Wallet and use Android smartphones to pay at contactless terminals. Thanks to our agreements with Visa and Carta Worldwide, using bank cards stored on Vodafone Wallet is fast, secure and simple.”
Jeremy Nicholds, Executive Director Mobile at Visa Europe, said: “We are really excited to bring this new payment service together with Vodafone, which will enable Visa credit and debit cards to be used for mobile contactless payments. This initiative is part of Visa’s strategy to accelerate mobile payments and make it easier for banks to enable their cards to make payments on mobile phones and for consumers to pay in the most secure and convenient way.”
Carta Worldwide has partnered with Vodafone to provide the payment card enabling technology. Brian Semkiw, CEO of Carta Worldwide, said: “We are thrilled to partner with Vodafone to make mobile payments the most simple, convenient and secure way to pay. Our Next Generation platform is built to provide the highest security and reliability standards. At the same time, the flexibility of our platform has allowed us to develop this innovative service with Vodafone in record time.”
Vodafone Wallet is currently available in Germany, Spain, the UK, Italy and The Netherlands. Customers can already add loyalty cards into the Vodafone Wallet, as well as pay with Vodafone SmartPass that was launched in partnership with Visa in 2013. This evolution of the Vodafone Wallet is part of the Vodafone mCommerce strategy designed to provide a mobile alternative to coins, banknotes and plastic cards.
Notes for editors
Photos of the Vodafone Wallet with an added card can be downloaded from:
https://www.flickr.com/x/t/0098009/gp/vodafonegroup/YJ0o4e/
For further information:
Vodafone Group
Media Relations
www.vodafone.com/media/contact
Investor Relations
Telephone: +44 (0) 7919 990 230
About Vodafone
Vodafone is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 55 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of 31 December 2014, Vodafone had 444 million mobile customers and 11.8 million fixed broadband customers. For more information, please visit:www.vodafone.com.
About Visa Europe
Visa Europe is a payments technology business owned and operated by member banks and other payment service providers from 37 countries. It is the leading payments system in Europe, having increased its market share over MasterCard in Europe from 55.5% in 2011 to 56.9% in 2013.
Visa Europe is at the heart of the payments ecosystem providing the services and infrastructure to enable millions of European consumers, businesses and governments to make electronic payments. Its members are responsible for issuing cards, signing up retailers and deciding cardholder and retailer fees. Visa Europe is also the largest transaction processor in Europe, responsible for processing more than 16 billion transactions annually – at a rate of 1,622 transactions per second at peak times.
There are more than 500m Visa cards in Europe, while €1 in every €6 spent in Europe is on a Visa card. Total expenditure on Visa cards exceeds €2 trillion annually, with €1.5 trillion spent at point-of-sale.
Since 2004, Visa Europe has been independent of Visa Inc. and incorporated in the UK, with an exclusive, irrevocable and perpetual licence in Europe. Both companies work in partnership to enable global Visa payments in more than 200 countries and territories.
For more information, visit www.visaeurope.com and @VisaEuropeNews
About Carta
Carta is an award-winning leader in digital transaction processing enablement technologies, including tokenization, digital credential management and provisioning, delivering new and innovative financial products for the digital world. Carta empowers banks, MNOs, OEMs, merchants and others to enable existing cardholder accounts or issue new financial products for proximity and cloud-based transactions quickly and easily.
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