Large Spanish department store chain El Corte Inglés has deployed 5,200 contactless terminals in its stores, the company announced on Tuesday, adding more momentum to one of Europe’s top contactless markets.
El Corte Inglés said the new terminals comprise 25% of the chain’s total point-of-sale terminals, and the chain predicts that 60% of its terminals will be contactless by the end of 2014 as the rollout gradually replaces older terminals with those supporting contactless.
“The idea is to gradually increase the number of terminals as their use becomes more widespread,” said El Corte Inglés in a statement.
A spokesman told NFC Times that the rollout of contactless “responds to the constant innovation policy of the company and its commitment to offer its clients the best service.”
Shoppers will be able to tap contactless cards or NFC-enabled phones with mobile payment applications to pay for purchases up to €20 (US$27.31), and for larger purchases shoppers can tap to pay but must enter a PIN. The terminals support Visa payWave and, almost certainly, MasterCard PayPass, as well.
There were nearly 350,000 terminals in Spain support contactless payments in Spain, according to Visa Europe. About 110,000 of those terminals belong to one of Spain’s largest banks, CaixaBank. Visa said it expects contactless terminals to reach 50% penetration in Spanish stores by the end of 2014. As of November 2013, 5 million contactless cards were on issue in Spain, including 3 million from CaixaBank.
Visa Europe said it recorded 2.1 million payWave transactions worth a total of €6.7 million in November 2013. While that was up by nearly 270% year over year, it represented less than one transaction per contactless card per month.
The El Corte Inglés terminal rollout coincides with the planned launch of CaixaBank’s contactless payment application supporting payWave, which will be stored on SIMs from telcos Orange, Telefónica, and Vodafone. Together, the three telcos account for 80% of Spain’s mobile users, and each also has plans for its own co-branded prepaid payment application. For instance, Vodafone announced in November 2013 that it was launching its Vodafone Wallet and SmartPass payments service in Spain, as well as Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Italy.
Caixabank plans a full commercial rollout coinciding with Mobile World Congress next month.
However, it remains to be seen whether take-up of contactless cards will translate to adoption of NFC mobile payments.
Rollouts in other countries, such as the Isis Mobile Wallet in the U.S. and an NFC-enabled mobile wallet from T-Mobile in Poland have seen only modest consumer response. In the U.S., some observers predict that this will change as the conversion to EMV brings greater penetration of contactless terminals, but Poland already has one of the highest penetration rates in Europe. Spain is also ranked as one of Visa Europe’s top five contactless markets.