THREEPACK: Dutch banks in new NFC payments alliance

Dutch banks ABN Amro, ING and Rabobank are to run an NFC payments pilot in the city of Leiden this summer, in conjunction with mobile network operator KPN, the municipality of Leiden and MasterCard.

The pilot will involve 1,000 consumers who have an account at one of the three banks and are also customers of KPN. They will be able to use an NFC phone to make payments in shops and restaurants around the city. Transactions of up to €25 can be made without a PIN, higher amounts can also be charged with a PIN.

The move follows a decision taken by the leading Dutch banks and mobile network operators in June 2012 to abandon plans to create a joint venture company to manage NFC payments in the Netherlands. The "Sixpack" partners found that forming an NFC joint venture company was "far more complex than we originally thought it would be," Rabobank's Wim Westerhof told NFC World.

The new pilot is being run by "Mobile Payment Netherlands" (MFN), a new group established by the three banks that favours "an open and accessible infrastructure" and is working closely with a number of suppliers. This partnership will remain in place until the pilot is completed at the end of 2013. The banks will then make their own individual decisions regarding how they wish to proceed with a wider rollout of NFC payments.