Canada’s largest bank and one of its three major mobile operators have announced plans to commercially launch NFC payments by the end of the year, following a trial this summer.
The Royal Bank of Canada, or RBC, and Bell Mobility said they plan to launch the SIM-based NFC payments service with debit and credit cards on up to five BlackBerry NFC phones and a range of Android devices from Samsung, Sony, HTC, LG Electronics and others.
RBC said NFC will be the “first piece of a broad RBC mobile-commerce solution rolling out to clients this year,” including nonpayment services.
The mobile-payments service will be part of the bank’s existing mobile-banking app and will work with the bank’s peer-to-peer payments service, which will enable RBC customers to send money to any individual or business in Canada.
The bank and telco will be “road testing” the NFC payments and P2P funds-transfer services over the summer with a “select” group of customers and merchants, said the bank. The bank declined to say how many people would participate in the trial.
For the commercial launch, the RBC and Bell said they expect to make five BlackBerry NFC phones available, the new BlackBerry 10 devices, the Z10 and Q10; along with older models, the Bold 9900, Bold 9790 or Curve 9360. That's in addition to a range of Android NFC models.
The announcement follows the launch last November of the first NFC commercial service in Canada, by the country’s largest mobile operator, Rogers Wireless, and another of its major banks, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, or CIBC, using older BlackBerry phones. In March, Rogers announced it would expand its suretap NFC payments service to Android smartphones, including the Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, along with new BlackBerry 10 devices.
Canada, which has among the highest penetration rates of contactless point-of-sale terminals and use of contactless bank cards, is expected to become a hotspot NFC.
Neither of the partnerships, between RBC and Bell, and Rogers and CIBC, is exclusive.
“We want to make sure our mobile offerings are available to a sizeable portion of our clients,” an RBC spokeswoman told NFC Times. “RBC expects payments services to work for all of its clients, regardless of the mobile network they choose. RBC is not partnered or exclusive with Bell.”
She didn’t respond to a question about whether the bank would work with other parties, such as handset makers, to possibly put its payment applications on embedded chips in phones, such as those from Samsung. She said only that the bank would “continue to work with industry leaders, key partners and merchants to develop mobile solutions beyond just payments.”
Both Bell and Rogers, along with Canada’s third major mobile operator Telus Mobility, are part of the EnStream joint venture, which will be providing the trusted service management for the NFC SIMs Bell will issue for the planned payments service with RBC, according to EnStream. EnStream uses a platform from Bell ID and data centers from BlackBerry for its TSM service.
Rogers, at least for its initial NFC service with CIBC, is using its own TSM, provided by Germany-based Giesecke & Devrient. G&D also serves as TSM for CIBC to provision the payment applications on Rogers’ SIM cards.
RBC said it would issue credit applications for the planned NFC service supporting either MasterCard PayPass or Visa payWave. For debit, it would likely support the contactless application, Flash, from Canada’s domestic debit network, Interac.
RBC in March participated with Interac in a demonstration of an NFC-enabled debit transaction at a Toronto-area McDonald’s restaurant using a BlackBerry phone.