Banca Mediolanum is partnering with Vodafone Italia to pilot tests of NFC mobile payments in Milan.
The Italian financial services organisation Banca Mediolanum is partnering with Vodafone Italia to pilot tests of NFC mobile payments with 60 consumers in Milan with a view to commercial launch
All consumers involved in the Mediolanum Mobile Pay trial have been provided with a Samsung Galaxy S III handset, pre-loaded with the bank’s mobile payment application, and containing an NFC SIM card provided by Vodafone.
The bank has developed the app in partnership with technology infrastructure and service provider SIA and has linked the app with a prepaid MasterCard, issued by the bank themselves, called InMediolanum Conto Carta.
Payments are deducted from the prepaid card account whenever a consumer makes a payment using their mobile phone at any contactless POS terminal. The trial is due to run until the commercial launch of the new mobile payments service, expected in early 2014.
Banca Mediolanum told NFC World: “The trial is taking place in Milan but we have had transactions also outside of Milan and outside Italy; some of our trialists tried the service outside the country, in England and the US.
“The test has a double purpose; to test the new service from the technical point of view and from an experiential one, in order to collect qualitative feedback to understand properly the user experience and to position Banca Mediolanum among the first movers in Italy in the mobile payments service.
“During the first weeks of trial we have collected over 600 successful NFC transactions in over 200 different merchants, in Italy and outside of it.”
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