{"id":43822,"date":"2013-08-07T23:30:28","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T21:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=43822"},"modified":"2013-08-08T08:46:36","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T06:46:36","slug":"absa-expands-mobile-nfc-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/43822\/absa-expands-mobile-nfc-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Absa expands mobile NFC trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Banking group Absa<\/a> has expanded its trial using\u00a0Near Field Communication (NFC<\/a>) enabled technology, which would enable the use of\u00a0mobile phones as a payment device.<\/p>\n

The trial kicked off in December 2011 and involved 500 of its own staff members operating in a live commercial environment.<\/p>\n

The trial would enable trial participants to load funds into a prepaid store of value on a secure element on the phone, at point of sale, through Absa Online or at Absa ATMs.<\/p>\n

BlackBerry handsets were initially used in the trials, while Absa also\u00a0committed to deploying 4,000 NFC-enabled point of sale terminals in retail stores across South Africa by Q3 2012.<\/p>\n

Arrie Rautenbach<\/a>, Absa Head of Retail Banking noted that the bank\u00a0has already introduced commercially available payment cards in the form of Absa OneTouch and Potentiate cards.<\/p>\n

Rautenbach added that there\u00a0are various transport cards also powered by Absa, which include: myconnect cards for the MyCiTi bus system in Cape Town; Tap-I-Fare cards in the taxi industry; and recently Rea Vaya cards for the Johannesburg BRT system.<\/p>\n

“These smart cards eliminate the need to carry cash while commuting, making it a safer experience,” the retail banking lead said.<\/p>\n

“The next step with NFC is to emulate these cards on a phone to a low payment by tapping your phone. For the initial staff pilot, this is done with the Absa OneTouch card, which means phones can be used to make payments anywhere the OneTouch cards are currently used,”\u00a0Rautenbach said.<\/p>\n

Absa has also recently expanded its NFC trials to include additional handsets, one of which is the Samsung S4.<\/p>\n

“The pilot has shown meaningful improvements since launch \u2013 these improvements are mostly aimed to make the lives of our customers easier through technology improvements of the wallet application and the availability of security technology on the phones,”\u00a0Rautenbach said.<\/p>\n

“Absa continues to develop this new form of payment and will launch commercially when acceptance is at sufficient scale,” the retail chief stressed.<\/p>\n

“As we learn from the practical, hands-on experiences of the trial, we will continue our discussions and deepen our relationships with the major players in the \u2018NFC ecosystem\u2019 to develop the commercial models, and extend the variety of payments instruments made available by the wallet,”\u00a0Rautenbach said.<\/p>\n

First National Bank (FNB<\/a>)\u00a0CEO\u00a0Michael Jordaan<\/a>\u00a0said at the back-end of last year that the bank is \u201cdabbling\u201d in near field communication (NFC) technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are dabbling in it (NFC),\u201d he told Businesstech at a function in Sandton, however he stressed that much of the change in the banks technology ecosystem would continue to centre on banking cards.<\/p>\n

More on Absa<\/h3>\n

Absa intros LCD, NFC card<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Is South Africa ready for cashless?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

FNB \u201cdabbling\u201d in NFC: CEO<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Absa trials NFC payments for mobile devices<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Absa commits to 4,000 NFC-enabled terminals by Q3<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Absa has expanded its trial using NFC enabled technology, which would enable the use of mobile phones as a payment device.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[29,161,76,26,1639,30,6455],"class_list":["post-43822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-absa","tag-blackberry","tag-fnb","tag-headline","tag-michael-jordaan","tag-nfc","tag-samsung-s4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43822"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43849,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43822\/revisions\/43849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}