Telecom Italia and Intesa Sanpaolo have arranged an agreement to boost take-up of mobile payment in Italy.
Using a mobile phone with a Telecom Italia NFC SIM and an Intesa Sanpaolo Group payment card, people will be able to pay for purchases simply by waving their mobile phone at an enabled checkout.
This venture is part of a project on which Telecom Italia is working with other mobile carriers, to create a national ecosystem for the mass take-up and use of NFC-based SIM card services. Telecom Italia is offering its mobile payment services to financial players as a technological enabler, developing smartphone-based proximity payments without altering existing payment system chains.
In 2011, Intesa Sanpaolo used the Group’s Move and Pay platform to become the first bank in Italy to run a Mobile Proximity Payment pilot. This leading-edge initiative came at the end of a groundbreaking process that began in 2009 to develop contactless payments and e-money services.
Starting with TIM customers, the Group is now poised to roll out its Move and Pay application on a mass scale, providing the service in partnership with the main telephone companies and the best-known international payment circuits in Italy and internationally. Over the next few months, Move and Pay will become available via an App that will gradually add more features to Intesa Sanpaolo’s mobile offering, including services to simplify everyday payments and reward the loyalty of customers for making purchases. The App will be a key driver towards “the mobile life”, in which people use their mobile phones to make purchases, and cash becomes less commonly used.
Participants at the GSMA NFC Mobile Money Summit, which is on in Milan until 25 October, can test drive the new Telecom Italia-Intesa Sanpaolo service. By the end of 2012, a pilot project will be launched in and around Milan, before being rolled out nationwide across Italy in early 2013.
Telecom Italia has assembled a SIM-based NFC services management architecture and platform for secure application delivery and management – including third-party applications – via its proprietary SIM cards. This architecture guarantees full interoperability between technological solutions and services under GSMA standards, offering an open digital portfolio that can manage all cards from multiple service providers (including non-bank organizations) virtualized on a SIM card.
Intesa Sanpaolo and Setefi, the Group’s leading e-money company, manage NFC services via a proprietary platform that supports every stage of the process, from activation to after sales care, ensuring high standards of security and interoperability. Setefi is also working to increase the number of retailers in Italy who accept contactless payments – the technology that allows people to pay for purchases simply by waving a card or mobile phone at checkout.
To foster integration between an increasing number of card issuers, and to allow card issuers to offer mobile payment services to their own customers who own a TIM SIM, Telecom Italia offers the option of direct interconnection with financial players or interconnection via third party hubs.
Milan, 24 October 2012
