Vipnet, a Croatian mobile telecoms operator which is owned by the Telekom Austria Group, has developed an NFC smart card reader for vending machine purchases, Telecompaper reports.

Vipnet employees have been testing the smart card reader at the company’s Zitnjak campus for six months. The NFC card reader, which is based on the Linux operating system, was developed in cooperation with Croatian technology firm Trilix, Telecompaper said.

The NFC card reader can be installed on most plug-and-play vending machine devices currently available in the market, Vipnet said. The card reader works with all available communications technologies such as GPRS, HSPA and LTE, and uses AES 256-bit encryption. Vending machine operators can remotely access the NFC smart reader for maintenance and configuration purposes.

According to Vipnet, transactions using the NFC reader take less than two seconds.