Paybox NFC: the new way to pay

Austrian mobile operator A1, a subsidiary of Telekom Austria Group, has teamed up with PayBox Bank to trial NFC mobile payments at select McDonald’s restaurants and Merkur supermarkets.

From now until summer, up to 5,000 customers will be able to use the partners’ “Paybox NFC” solution to make contactless mobile transactions up to €25 without the need to enter a PIN. According to A1, the payment solution can be stored on a secure chip directly on the SIM card of a mobile phone or embedded in an NFC sticker.

After the testing phase is complete, A1 says they plan to expand Paybox NFC to additional points of sale and new business partners.The telco, which is one of the few operators worldwide to own its own bank, today announced it is launching a trial of its “paybox NFC” application, with the intention of launching it commercially this summer.

The application will be available on both NFC SIM cards and contactless stickers issued by the telco. Among the NFC phones that will support the SIMs will be the new Sony Xperia S and HTC One X, said the telco, though a 500-person trial kicking off this month is expected to start with the passive stickers.

RISE has planned, developed, integrated and roled out the whole system.