Orange launches NFC in Poland

The carrier has partnered with mBank and MasterCard for the national launch of Orange Cash, a commercial NFC service that is available on nine different mobile phone models.

Orange Poland
ORANGE CASH: Commercial launch

Orange Poland has launched Orange Cash, Poland’s first commercial NFC payments service.

The new service is being delivered by Orange in conjunction with mBank and MasterCard and uses Orange SIMs to store an NFC version of a prepaid MasterCard issued by mBank. Nine different models of NFC phone are available to customers from launch, including:

  • HTC One X
  • Nokia Lumia 610
  • Nokia 808 Pure View
  • Sony Xperia S
  • Sony Xperia P
  • Sony Xperia T
  • Samsung Galaxy S III
  • BlackBerry Bold 9900
  • BlackBerry Bold 9790

Customers who sign up for Orange Cash will receive a new NFC-enabled SIM, which comes with the prepaid card pre-loaded, free of change. Customers are not required to register the prepaid account and can use it anonymously — but users are being incentivised to register their accounts with the offer of a 15 zloty (US$4.77) credit for the first 20,000 people to register.

All mBank Orange Cash MasterCard customers are also eligible for a promotional offer that gives them a 50% bonus on each top up of their prepaid card during the first three months, up to a maximum of 50 zloty (US$15.90) a month.

The service will begin operations on 1 November but customers can order the new service today from Orange.

The commercial launch follows a pre-commercial pilot with 2,000 customers that has been running since March 2011 and is expected to be followed by an announcement of a commercial launch from T-Mobile Poland later this week.

“I am convinced that thanks to the simplicity and convenience of Orange Cash, our customers will be happy to learn about the benefits of mobile NFC technology,” says Maciej Witucki, president of Orange Poland. “We hope that next year we can attract hundreds of thousands of customers.”

“mBank is a natural partner for this initiative,” says Cezary Stypulkowski, president of BRE Bank, the online banking service’s parent. “We believe that the market for mobile payments will grow rapidly, and mBank will be the leading player.”

“Over the past four years, Poland has become the undisputed leader in the development of contactless payments,” adds MasterCard’s Paul Rychliński. “Over one-third of payment terminals already support Mastercard PayPass technology and more than 10% of all card transactions in Poland are made with PayPass. In terms of the monthly number of such transactions, Poland is in the top three countries in the world.”

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