National Australia Bank has introduced a peer-to-payment application, which enables customers to transfer funds, initiated by NFC or QR codes or by using a mobile number, email address or Facebook account.

The application, NAB Flik, can generate a QR code for users to scan to initiate a funds transfer, or users with NFC-capable handsets can tap their phones together to exchange funds. The NFC tap initiates a funds transfer from one account to the other within National Australia Bank’s online banking system. This is a transfer between bank accounts over the network, not a direct transfer of money, and no secure element is involved.

To send or request a payment, NAB Flik users can also select a contact from a phone, Facebook, or email contact list. The application will send the contact a request to either register for the application or enter their bank account information.

The application is available for both iPhone and Android, following an internal trial involving 1,000 users. Users need a National Australia Bank transaction account. The application has a daily transaction limit of AU$1,000, and the bank says that it is “designed for smaller transactions between friends, such as paying for dinner, coffee, movie tickets or drinks.”

It also only works for peer-to-peer transactions, not purchases at merchants’ point of sale terminals. National Australia Bank says that it wanted to introduce a peer-to-peer application first and gather feedback from customers before considering expansion despite Australia’s relatively high rate of contactless payment acceptance, which has led to several NFC mobile payment trials in the country during the past year.

Over 100,000 point-of-sale terminals in Australia support Visa payWave, and most, if not nearly all of those also support MasterCard PayPass. According to MasterCard Worldwide, one in ten card transactions less than $100 AUD uses PayPass.

In August 2012, Westpac bank launched a three-month trial of its PayPass application. In October 2012, ANZ Bank launched an employee trial of its Visa payWave application on Optus-issued SIMs in the Galaxy S III.

In Nov. 2012, Vodafone and Visa held an Australian trial of SmartPass involving about 100 Visa and Vodafone employees using an ANZ Bank application on Samsung Galaxy S IIIs. Vodafone said that it plans a commercial launch, but did not set a target date. At the time of the trial, a spokeswoman told NFC Times that the launch could occur “as early as” 2013. In December 2012, mobile carrier Optus and Heritage Bank conducted an employee trial of a mobile payment application using Visa payWave. 

However, the bank says that it may consider expanding its application to purchases at point of sale terminals in the future, but it currently plans to focus on the peer-to-peer service.  

To expand to the point of sale with NFC, it would have to support card emulation, and this along with requirements from the payment schemes, would require the bank to put its application on a secure element.

That could be an NFC SIM issued by telcos, though Australia is also considered a key market to host payment applications on embedded chips in NFC phones.