Ukraine's PrivatBank to distribute contactless stickers

PrivatBank in the Ukraine has contracted with Gemalto to provide conactless stickers to all customers, paving the way for the country's first commercial mobile payment deployment.

PrivatBank, the nation's largest commercial bank serving over 18 million customers in the country, says it will distribute Gemalto's Optelio stickers through its branch network and at high street retail outlets.

Customers attach the sticker to their mobile phone in order to tap out at PayPass contactless terminals for small amount purchases.

Nikita Volkov, PrivatBank's vice-CEO, views the sticker deployment as an interim technology on the way to full NFC deployment. "In the longer term, this will help us to prepare the market for mobile NFC, with the sticker being a first towards mobile contactless payment," he says.

"Moving to contactless is more than just changing the technology, it is also changing the long-standing consumer habits," adds Jean-Paul Ternisien, senior vice president at Gemalto. "Gemalto's Optelio solution offers a cost-effective option to quickly deploy mobile contactless payment services to PrivatBank's existing customers."

Related Companies

Gemalto PrivatBank

Channels

Retail banking Payments

Keywords

Mobile & online banking

Comments: (2)

A Finextra member 27 September, 2012, 11:08

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Please, please stop referring to contactless stickers as 'mobile payments'. They are by definition an alternate form factor for contactless cards and remain passive in the same way as a card. They are no more inventive than a contactless wristband, watch, key fob, side card or any other way to hold a contactless antenna and chip. You can achieve the same thing by sellotaping your regular contactless card to the back of your mobile - and it probably works better!!

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A Finextra member 27 September, 2012, 14:09

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You are quite right - this kind of mobile payment was configured by the Tokyo teenagers some 10 years ago - they glued their contactless commuter card to the back of the mobile phone - and viola! the mobile payments were invented. Why would anybody want to haul out the phone and tap on the payment terminal when the same thing can be done with a regular chipcard? On these mobile payments via card accounts the judge is still very much out - does 3 billion consumers and 35 million merchants have a need to replace the card with the phone or is this a push from the mobile handset stakeholders without any real user demand?