Introducing Contactless Transit and Retail Payments in Brazil

“With over 2 million contactless prepaid cards being used in for public transit in Fortaleza today it just makes sense to extend this easy and convenient payment solution beyond transportation and into our retail stores,” explains Junia Moreira, Partner and Director of Libercard. “A large number of our transit riders are part of the unbanked population of Brazil and the ability to use prepaid accounts gives them a safe and easy way to pay for their day-to-day purchases. In just 3 months time Libercard had over 2.5 million dollars in purchases with the first 20,000 pilot cards and plans to issue another 120,000 cards through the end of the year, eventually fully replacing the 1.5 M transit only cards with Libercard dual use cards.”

“This deployment marks the beginning of a new era in payments in Latin America. The success in Fortaleza demonstrates the enormous potential that contactless payment solutions have in reaching out to unbanked populations in developing countries with new financial services and readies the ecosystem for future expansion of payments using NFC-enabled mobile phones,” said Mohammad Khan, President and Founder of ViVOtech.

“As one of largest banking card manufacturers in the world and market leader in Latin America, Inteligensa is committed to leadership in technology innovation for banking and payment services across the region,” said Venanzio Cipolitti, President and CEO of the Inteligensa Group. “We are leveraging new technologies such as contactless and NFC in Latin America to deliver valuable services to consumers in implementations that meet the unique requirements and realities of the region such as in the Libercard project.”

This Fortaleza pilot is very the first implementation in Latin America of a combined contactless payment card for transit and retail use. ViVOtech’s ViVOpay 5000 readers accept prepaid payments for purchases and re-loading both transit and payment accounts is available at all retailer locations. ViVOpay’s technology supports future expansion of the project to include branded contactless EMV payment cards and NFC mobile phone payments in addition to MiFare technology.

“We are growing very fast. The partnership with ViVOtech and Inteligensa gives us the technological support we need to move forward, expanding our activities and market leadership,” continued Libercard Partner and Director Junia Moreira. “After expanding in Fortaleza, we want to deploy this solution in other cities and states throughout Brazil and Latin America.”

For more information about the contactless payment solutions used in Fortaleza, go to http://www.vivotech.com, http://www.inteligensa.com and http://www.libercard.com.br.