Mastercard lets Polish merchants accept payments with just their smartphones

Two hundred small businesses are to participate in a pilot that lets them accept contactless payments using just a mobile app on their NFC smartphones. “No separate payment terminals nor other peripheral equipment will be needed,” Mastercard says.

Mastercard logoThe pilot is being conducted by Mastercard in conjunction with Elavon, Polskie ePłatności and Mobeewave and is due to run from autumn 2017 until the summer of 2018.

“The first stage will involve 200 small and micro businesses from all over Poland, with the number ultimately expected to grow to 500,” Mastercard explains. “In the pilot phase, the limit for each transaction accepted by a mobile device will be PLN 50 (US$14), which is the contactless payment limit in Poland without the need to enter a pin.”

“A recent study commissioned by the Polish Foundation for Development of Cashless Payments (FROB) shows that among entrepreneurs that gave up card or mobile payments, 36% did so because of the associated costs. The solution to be piloted aims to address this.”

“Poland is one of the worldwide leaders in contactless payments,” Mastercard adds. “More than two-thirds of transactions with Mastercard cards in Poland are already contactless. Moreover, according to the National Bank of Poland, Poles carry 29.4m contactless payment cards in their wallets, which already accounts for nearly 78% of all cards.

“There are 514,000 contactless terminals in Poland, which represents 91% of all terminals accepting cashless payments.”

“Mastercard is committed to enable every connected device to accept payments — and I am delighted that Poland is the first country where this latest innovation in payment technologies is being tested,” says Bartosz Ciołkowski, Mastercard’s country manager for Poland.

“Poles have proven many times that they are open to innovations in trade and finance, and Poland needs such solutions on its way to become a cash-lite economy. I am proud that together with our partners we can contribute to making yet another technological leap in payments.”

“This project is an important step in widening the possibilities in merchant card acceptance in Poland through innovations in the hardware itself, which offers convenience and ease of use for both merchants and consumers,” adds Janusz Diemko, president of Polskie ePłatności.

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3 comments on this article

  1. XPressTap already does this (Also accepts other card networks in addition to MasterCard) although it isn’t available in Poland yet.

  2. Certainly in the US, merchants have a number of options that they can use to accept payments using mobile devices rather than dedicated terminals.. These services usually come at a premium and are most attractive to merchants that have low transaction volume.

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