Contactless Smart Cards, RFID, Payment, Transit and Security

Singaplore plans major contactless deployment

Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore plans to boost the number of retail locations where contactless cards can be accepted by 19,000, according to the Straits Times.

The added locations include hawker stalls, provisions shops and vending machines. As an incentive for adopting contactless payment, IDA is cutting transaction fees by up to half and waiving the rental of payment terminals for a year.


Today, Singaporeans use their 5.9 million contactless cards mainly at buses stations, with participating non-transit retailers numbering only 5,000. Consequently, only 5 percent of ez-link card transactions and 20 per cent of Nets’ FlashPay card transactions take place in non-transit areas.

The initiative aims to right this imbalance, raising the number of contactless card transactions to an expected 94 million a year by 2011. Deployment is expected to cost $16 million.

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Superdrug, one of Britain’s largest beauty and health retailers, has introduced contactless payment for its in-store customers, according to Retail Gazette.

Created by Streamline and Visa Europe, the contactless system will enable customers to make payments of up to £15 (approx. USD $23) by simply waving their contactless bank card at the more than 50 participating Superdrug stores in London and Liverpool.

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As some may recall back in June 2010, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) of New York launched tap-and-go contactless payments for commuters to enter select subway stations and participating bus lines using MasterCard PayPass-enabled terminals. Well, the results are in.

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la Caixa and Visa Europe have begun rolling out their contactless payment system in Barcelona. The bank is set to make all cards and point-of-sale across Barcelona contactless, requiring the distribution of 1 million cards and more than 15,000 new POS terminals.

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The European Payments Council (EPC) has published the second edition of its “White Paper on Mobile Payments.”

According to EPC, the white paper focuses on the usage of the mobile payments in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and explores how m-payment services can be delivered through cooperation between service providers in the payment industry and players within the mobile ecosystem.

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A new survey from Euro Kartensysteme shows that Germans are starting to embrace the idea of contactless and NFC payments.

Out of 1,040 Germans aged 18-59, 43% responded that they would like to make contactless payments if given the opportunity, of which 58% percent would make their payments with a debit card card, 41% with a credit card and 50% with an NFC phone.

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Credit Agricole, a retail banking group based in Paris, is teaming up with Gemalto to launch a large-scale deployment of contactless EMV banking cards in France.

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