Canadian debit network Interac, along with the Royal Bank of Canada, McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada and BlackBerry demonstrated what Interac billed as the first NFC-enabled debit transaction in Canada.
Not participating in the demonstration today at a Toronto-area McDonald’s restaurant was a mobile operator. Instead, the Interac Flash debit application is believed to have been preloaded onto the embedded secure elements in BlackBerry smartphones used in the demo.
It would be one of the first, if not the first, payment application loaded onto the embedded chip in a BlackBerry for purposes of public demonstration or trial. The handset maker, formerly known as Research In Motion, had earlier only indicated it would be promoting corporate or enterprise applications on its embedded chips, not consumer payment.
But it’s not clear yet whether rollouts of the Interac Flash contactless debit application will use embedded chips in NFC phones, including those from BlackBerry or Samsung Electronics. The Flash application on the embedded chip in the BlackBerry might have only been implemented for the demo.
In Interac’s announcement, it said that the demo today “set the stage for a roll out of mobile Interac Flash in the coming year.” And RBC, billed as Canada’s largest bank, will be rolling out NFC with the application later this year, the bank confirmed.
“RBC clients will be able to use their mobile devices to make debit payments when and where they wish to make them–and then to immediately check their online bank balance from those same devices," Dave McKay, RBC’s group head, personal and commercial banking, said in a statement.
If they do use the embedded chips, Canadian banks such as RBC and Scotiabank, which also indicated today it would roll out mobile Interac Flash, could bypass mobile operators.
It’s also possible to load the Flash debit application onto SIM cards, and a spokeswoman for Interac told NFC Times that the debit scheme would support both types of secure elements.
RBC and Scotiabank might also be planning to offer payWave or PayPass applications on NFC phones as part of their mobile-payment rollout plans.
In November, Rogers Communications, Canada’s largest mobile operator, along with another large Canadian bank, CIBC, launched an NFC-based mobile-payment service, “suretap,” offering a Visa or MasterCard contactless credit application loaded onto Rogers SIM cards. Rogers introduced two older BlackBerry NFC models for the service, the Bold 9900 and Curve 9360.
Rogers, a little more than a week ago, announced it would expand suretap to Android smartphones, including the Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, along with new BlackBerry 10 devices, such as the Z10.
Interac launched its Flash debit application in 2010 and it’s accepted at such fast-food chains as McDonald’s, Tim Hortons and Pizza Nova, along with music and book retailer HMV.
All three major card schemes rolling out contactless in Canada, MasterCard, Visa and Interac Association, are keen to move contactless payment to mobile. MasterCard in particular, has noted a high rate of use of contactless in Canada, last year proclaiming that “over 10% of MasterCard transactions in Canada are contactless, just waiting for smartphone enablement.”
While PayPass and payWave are expected to be loaded onto NFC SIMs, it’s also possible they will find their way onto embedded secure elements in NFC phones in Canada.
Visa last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona announced a global partnership with Samsung to preload payWave onto embedded chips in new Samsung NFC devices.
The embedded secure element will not be activated in all markets. But Visa’s head of mobile, Bill Gajda, when asked at a press event in Barcelona by a Canadian bank about availability of the Samsung embedded chip, said: “I think in the case of Canada, you guys may get access to these devices and launch some bank central mobile payment apps.”