Nine Polish banks have confirmed plans for a commercial launch early this year of Visa's cloud-based mobile contactless payment services, according to a press release.

Banking providers ING Bank Śląski, mBank, Bank Millennium, Raiffeisen Polbank, eurobank, Getin Bank, Bank Polskiej Spółdzielczości and Bank Smart will join Bank Zachodni WBK in rolling out services that use Visa’s cloud-based payment specifications. The services will allow customers who use payment apps with Host Card Emulation functionality to make contactless payments via an NFC-enabled Android smartphone.

"The high number of banks working to deploy Visa mobile payments highlights the sector’s immense interest in the service," Jeremy Nicholds, executive director for mobile for Visa Europe, said in a statement. "Visa’s cloud-based mobile payments can quickly be made available to a large group of consumers and provide a foundation for the bank to offer a wide range of innovative functionalities in the future. Visa’s mobile contactless payment technologies have become an integral part of our Polish members' mobile banking strategies."

Poland already is embracing contactless payment technology and is Visa’s largest market in Europe in terms of contactless transaction volumes, according to the announcement. Close to 70 percent of Visa cards in the market have contactless functionality, with the technology accounting for more than 40 percent of all Visa payments in Poland. More than 75 percent of all in-store point-of-sale terminals currently support contactless payment. Plans are in place to equip all Polish POS terminals to support the technology by the end of 2017.