ING in Poland makes mobile payments contactless
21 March 2017
Forgotten your wallet or purse? No problem. ING in Poland customers can now pay for goods or services using only their Android smartphones following the launch this month of a ‘MasterCard on your phone’ payment service.
Available for customers with a Moje ING mobile app, the contactless service was developed in less than a year by teams from Poland, the Netherlands and Spain. It is one of the first global projects of this type to provide a service that can also be used by other ING countries.
“Payments with a mobile phone are faster and easier than payments with plastic payment cards simply because you always have your mobile with you,” said Poland’s head of Daily Banking Barbara Borgieł-Cury.
“Contactless mobile phone payments are becoming a natural element of our lives. It’s a convenient and secure alternative to usual ways of paying. ING customers can activate the MasterCard service on their mobiles on the ING mobile app at any time, even in a queue to the cash desk, and then comfortably pay for their shopping.”
Conveniently, the service doesn’t require a change of SIM card, a special agreement with a mobile phone service provider or even Internet access at the time of payment. Instead it uses the Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology supported by Android.
There are currently 460,000 contactless payment terminals available in Poland.
Following our cooperation with MasterCard, the solution could also support other market offerings like Android Pay, Samsung Pay and Apple Pay.
A richer shopping experience
“We want to make paying with your mobile richer and better than paying with plastic cards,” said ING Payments Centre program manager Michel Drupsteen.
“For instance, it’s much easier to share a receipt on your phone than have all those paper bills in your purse. The mobile customer experience also opens up possibilities to more easily combine it with all kinds of loyalty programs.”
“We’re not the first to introduce contactless mobile payments. What’s special about this launch is that we have now set a standardised solution within ING to quickly bring mobile contactless payments to a large number of customers in a number of ING markets.”
Later this year, next releases of the solution will be launched in other countries.