JCB trials mobile contactless payment scheme in Europe

June 14, 2006
Datamonitor

Japanese payment card company JCB will conduct trials of its mobile contactless payment system in the Netherlands this autumn, in what JCB claims will be the first implementation of this type of payment scheme in Europe.

Selected JCB customers will be supplied with a Nokia mobile phone equipped with chip technology and installed with JCB's contactless payment application.

Customers will then be able to use the phones to pay for items of small-value at participating merchants. In the first section of the pilot, the card issuer says it will target approximately 100 cardmembers located in Amsterdam and merchants in the city's World Trade Centre area.

JCB says the pilot is chiefly designed to asses the technological aspects and the customers ease at using the system.

"We are confident that it will enable us to expand our business scope to the smaller amount transactions, as well as to extend a higher level of services to our cardmembers," said Hajime Matsuura, branch manager at JCB International's Amsterdam Branch, quoted by Finextra.

Several other companies will be involved in the product development. Gemplus will develop the mobile payment application and personalization system, Dutch telecoms operator KPN will install the application to the Nokia NFC mobile phones, CCV Holland and Vivotech will install the contactless EMV readers and PaySquare will provide merchant acquiring services.