17 jan 2012The whole of Barcelona to start using wireless payments

The largest bank in the Spanish consumer market, La Caixa, is introducing wireless payments in Barcelona.

Together with VISA, La Caixa will start issuing a million bank-cards to its customers. The two parties are also going to up-grade 17,000 point-of-sale terminals in local shops. These will be converted to make them capable of receiving payments via wireless communication. In addition, 500 ATMs will be converted to NFC-technology.

Soon, all that residents of Barcelona will have to do is to swipe their bank-card along a point-of-sale terminal in order to make a payment. Transactions of less than twenty euro will no longer require a Personal Identification Number (PIN).

Transferring data between a card and point-of-sale terminal will take place via NFC wireless communication technology. This is currently in bank-cards and OV [public transport] smart-cards, but this could change rapidly. The general assumption is that, in the future, mobile phones will become primary carriers of these NFC-chips. Plastic cards will then be heading straight for the shredder.

La Caixa is investing nine million euro in making Barcelona wireless. In the next three years it will invest 35 to 40 million euro in 'mobilising' the rest of Spain.

Last week the Sparkasse in Germany announced that they would quickly be introducing NFC-cards for all their 45 million customers.

Source: Emerce