France: Visa Europe to Launch Another microSD Trial in NFC Demo City

Scope: 
Trial
Status: 
Planned
Caen
France
49.1829
-0.370679
Launch: 
Dec 2011
Main Application: 
Payment
Mobile Operator: 
N/A
Service Provider (application): 
Crédit Agricole (Visa payWave)
Merchants: 
500-plus
Users: 
200
NFC Handsets: 
N/A
TSM*: 
Gemalto (personalization)
Secure Element: 
microSD card
Other Vendors: 
Visa Europe, DeviceFidelity (contactless microSD, iPhone case), NXP Semiconductors (contactless chip, secure element)

About 200 bank customers and employees will be able to tap their iPhones with a contactless attachment case and microSD cards to pay where Visa payWave is accepted.

NFC Times Take: 

The trial is one of several involving microSD cards and the iPhone. In fact, Visa Europe and Groupe BPCE (Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Epargne), launched a similar trial with more users of the iPhone and also some Android and BlackBerry smartphones in June in the French cities of Nice and Strasbourg. These cities, like Caen, are sites designated for expanded full NFC phone trials. The microSD are generally considered bridge technologies, until the arrival of full NFC phones in greater numbers. But the microSDs do enable banks to bypass operators to offer mobile payment, so they could stick around longer. But firm issuing models are yet to be worked out for microSDs.

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