Spain Goes Contactless

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Ingenico has announced its successful participation in the first mobile shopping experience in Spain, in Sitges, located 35 km from Barcelona. The project saw over 500 merchants offering shopping via a mobile phone equipped with NFC technology and lasted six months, starting in mid 2010.
 
The experience was led by La Caixa, Telefonica and Visa Europe. Ingenico was a technological partner, supplying all the payment terminals. The so called “Mobile Shopping Sitges 2010” project was the first mobile contactless project in Europe that involved this number of participants. It was considered to be highly successful. Merchants in Sitges now have the technology in place to continue payment via mobile phone.
 
Of the 1,500 participating customers, 90% used the mobile phones for payments, and 80% of the merchants carried out transactions using the deployed system. Transactions valued at up to €20 could be made without a PIN; they accounted for 60% of the purchases. Larger transactions could be carried out provided the customer entered their PIN on the keypad of the merchant's terminal to confirm the purchase.
 
“Mobile shopping is steadily becoming a reality in Spain as other projects  are being launched in 2011,” stated Jose Luis Arias, Managing Director Ingenico Spain. “Ingenico is proud to be involved in so many developments across Europe and in all parts of the world. The success of these experiences further demonstrates the relevance of our technology for the benefits of the merchants and the end users”.