Telecom Lead Europe: Portugal Telecom has launched a new mobile wallet program
to its 11,000 employees.
The pilot features a range of mobile payments
technologies at the point of sale, including NFC, QR codes and text messages.
The telecom operator will run the program for three
months. PT will assess the viability of mobile payments as well as which
technologies are more reliable and how consumers and businesses respond to
them.
“This is a very important project because it will
help us gain a better understanding of the technology that has been appearing
on the market, including NFC, and of how people interact with these new
technologies and with the possibility to pay via mobile phone,” said Tiago
Silva Lopes, head of PT’s multi-platform data and content department.
PT’s internet subsidiary SAPO developed the program. The
project presented some challenges on security and usability, but presented
plenty of learning opportunities as well.
“We have two major goals with the project. On the
one hand, to test all the technology we have built over the past few months and
learn from it, and secondly, we want to understand what the barriers that users
will have with this pilot and dramatically improve all aspects related to the
usability of the pilot,” said SAPO CTO Celso Martinho.
PT said the wallet provides several advantages over other
payment methods for both consumers and merchants. Consumers can dispense with
cash and coins, conduct faster transactions and use any type of mobile device
to make payments. Merchants can lower costs associated with handling money.
The pilot program already has several partners including
retailers Torrine, Fruit Simple, ICA and Solnave, plus technology partners
Huawei and Incard.
Asia Pacific telecom market to dominate contactless mobile
payments
Asia Pacific is set to dominate contactless (proximity)
mobile payments, representing 41 percent of the transactions in 2016. Remote
mobile payments will account for nearly $226 billion in mobile payments in
2012.
Proximity mobile payment transactions will approach 9.9
billion in 2016, up from 1.1 billion in 2012, nearly a ten-fold increase,
according to NPD In-Stat.
editor@telecomlead.com
