Australia's eftpos joins with C-SAM to develop NFC mobile wallet
Australia will be getting an NFC-enabled mobile wallet courtesy of eftpos, the nation's largest payment system, and mobile wallet provider C-SAM. C-SAM and eftpos have signed a five-year agreement whereby C-SAM will provide an eftpos mobile wallet and NFC widget for the Australian market.
According to an announcement from eftpos, trials of mobile payments will begin at retailers in the next few months.
"After almost 30 years in the market as Australia's most used payment card network at the point of sale, eftpos is now looking at at new ways to pay," said eftpos CEO Bruce Mansfield. "This agreement will enable eftpos to move into proof of concept trials very quickly, to test various solutions for the Australian market."
Mansfield added that eftpos wants to make sure any new technology it offers will provide FIs, retailers and consumers with secure, accessible and affordable payment solutions.
The new mobile wallet will be offered to FIs and retailers as a white-label product. Other potential services of the mobile wallet will include loyalty and offers.
On behalf of C-SAM, company CEO Felix Marx said the company's extensive experience in NFC and mobile payments has produced a scalable and secure mobile wallet management platform supported by years of research and development across a range of industries. "Our partnership with eftpos enables eftpos to deploy mobile wallet capabilities quickly and easily under various brands," Marx said.
The potential scale of the eftpos/C-SAM offering is huge. As the most widely used debit card system in Australia, eftpos handles almost 80 percent of debit card transactions with more than 6.2 million eftpos transactions made each day, eftpos reported. Last year, more than 2.2 billion eftpos transactions worth $134 billion were made by Australian consumers.
Read more about mobile wallets.