CUA, Australia’s largest customer-owned financial institution, has become the first in the Asia Pacific region to launch an NFC payments service that makes use of host card emulation (HCE) technology.

To use the new redi2PAY service, customers with an Android NFC phone running KitKat or later download the redi2pay app from the Google Play Store. They can then make mobile payments at any of the more than 100,000 contactless terminals already rolled out around Australia.

“While many of our competitors are charging customers a separate fee for having ‘tap and go’ capability on their phone, we are providing this at no cost,” says Chris Whitehead, CUA’s chief executive officer.

CUA is working with payments services provider Cuscal to provide redi2pay to its customers. Cuscal has been testing HCE payments since March 2014 and is now making the technology available on a commercial basis to all its 100-plus clients.