Commonwealth Bank of Australia's Mobile NFC Pilot

This deployment marks Australia’s first NFC mobile phone payment pilot and supports both credit and prepaid mobile phone payments. NFC phones given away at the MasterCard Masters Golf Tournament launch can be used throughout the country for payment at any contactless-enabled store.

“We’re really excited to be the first Australian bank to trial contactless payment technology using Near Field Communication (NFC),” said Lynda McMillan, Executive Manager, Credit Cards Issuing at the Commonwealth Bank. “ViVOtech’s NFC payment solution was selected because of its easy to use wallet interface for users and the company’s proven and highly secure OTA provisioning infrastructure to easily manage credit and debit card downloads.”

The Commonwealth Bank is the first Australian bank to introduce a contactless payment solution like MasterCard PayPass to the Australian market and is the first institution to introduce NFC-enabled mobile phone payments into the country. For this trial program, ViVOtech is supplying Commonwealth Bank with its full line of NFC-enabled payment products including:

• A Commonwealth Bank-branded ViVOwallet mobile phone user interface supporting easy downloads of MasterCard’s PayPass credit and debit cards
• ViVOnfc Issuer Server that provides over-the-air (OTA) loading and personalization of card details into the mobile phones
• ViVOnfc Control Server to provide over-the-air (OTA) management of wallet loading and personalization.

“We are pleased to have been selected as provider of the NFC mobile phone payment and OTA provisioning software technology for this significant NFC payment trial in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Michael Mullagh, ViVOtech CEO. “Today our vision of a truly mobile society is one step closer to reality as the launch of this program will allow Australian consumers to use their mobile phones for credit and debit payments at contactless merchant locations across Australia.”

This trial marks ViVOtech’s entry onto another continent, expanding its ViVOnfc trial customer base across the globe. The ViVOnfc suite of products has been used in over 16 pilot programs worldwide and enables mobile phone payments, promotions and marketing programs. The ViVOnfc solution was recently named as a finalist in the prestigious SESAMES Award for Software in 2007 and is ready for the upcoming commercial roll-outs of mobile phone payments expected in 2008.