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Canadian fintech Mobeewave could see its contactless-payment service for Samsung smart phones expand thanks to a new agreement with National Bank of Canada. And this week a British financial trade group announced that contactless payments in the United Kingdom jumped 97% in 2017.
Dubbed National Bank Easy Pay, the service developed by Montreal-based Mobeewave enables National Bank small-business customers using Samsung’s Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S8 and S8+, and the Galaxy Note8 to accept payments from Visa and Mastercard contactless cards without the need for peripheral hardware.
Merchants also can use the service, available by downloading a mobile app, to accept payments through the Samsung Pay, Google Pay, and Apple Pay mobile wallets. Purchasers get receipts via email.
Most payment cards in Canada now have near-field communication antennas for contactless payments, and the Samsung devices support NFC. In February, Mobeewave announced a global agreement with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to distribute its white-label technology on Samsung devices.
Montreal-based National Bank, which according to Relbanks.com, a bank-rating site, is Canada’s seventh-largest bank by assets, has 25,000 small and mid-sized business customers, according to a spokesperson. The bank provides merchant-processing services through Atlanta-based Global Payments Inc. Global has exclusive marketing alliances with National Bank and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), and a referral agreement with HSBC Bank Canada.
National Bank says it is the first bank in Canada to offer the Mobeewave technology to small businesses. In a press release, Mobeewave’s co-founder and chief executive, Benjamin du Haÿs, said that “from the get-go, it’s been clear that [National Bank] understands our business environment, which makes it easy for us to collaborate. They have a genuine desire to innovate and partner up with fintechs to integrate new services.”
Mobeewave and Global Payments did not respond to Digital Transactions News’ inquiries.
Meanwhile, UK Finance, a trade group of nearly 300 banks and other financial firms, reported that contactless payments jumped 97% year-over-year in 2017 to 5.6 billion transactions.
“This was driven by the continued roll-out of contactless cards; the continued roll-out of card acceptance devices; [and] consumers becoming increasingly comfortable and familiar with making contactless payments,” the group said in its “UK Payment Markets” report for 2018.
The U.K. had 119 million contactless cards in issue as of Dec. 31 representing 78% of debit cards and 62% of credit cards, the report says. Sixty-three percent of adults now regularly make contactless payments. Supermarkets are the most popular locations for contactless payments, accounting of 38% of the total, according to the report.
Financial executives expect contactless transaction volumes to keep growing in light of card-industry plans to have every bank-issued point-of-sale terminal contactless-capable by January 2020, the report adds. Contactless cards accounted for 15% of all payments last year, and forecasters expect them to capture 36% by 2027.
The report says “other” payment methods, including but not limited to PayPal and the so-called mobile-wallet “Pays”—Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay—collectively had 561 million payments last year. The report predicts other payment forms will grow 56% to 877 million transactions over the next decade.
