France is doubling down on mobile payments

Aldi France has teamed up with Verifone in a partnership that will see the latter provide Group Aldi’s 900 French stores with 3,200 payment devices designed to accept all cashless payments including contactless and mobile wallets.

According to Verifone data, smartphones made up 87% of all mobile phone purchases and with the likes of Apple, Android and Samsung Pay, the company says, “Consumers have mobile wallet and contactless technologies in their hands to speed up purchasing and experience shopping convenience.” A recent Capgemini report said that mobile payments will grow at an annual rate of 32.2% until 2020.

The machine that Aldi will use to process contactless payments will be the VX520, which will work with the mobile payment services above.

“Verifone is extremely pleased that Aldi has extended its relationship based on our past performance and our continued innovations in payments,” said Jean-Philippe Niedergang, VP and GM Southern Europe, Verifone.

This is the third boost to mobile payments in France this month after the telco giant Orange announced plans to work with Apple Pay, and Oberthur Technologies (OT) partnered with French regulatory bodies to promote mobile payments in the country. Orange Cash is a prepaid rechargeable account that’s used by around 200,000 Orange customers and the partnership will see the American tech giant having access to that user-base.

As for OT, French banks have commissioned STET, the retail payment operator for French and European markets, and Cartes Bancaires CB Group (GIE-CB), the regulatory body for the payment card system, to work together to develop an industrial platform to enable banks to use this new payment method securely. The two national bodies chose to work with OT on the project.

 

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