MasterCard is getting ready for the launch of
its first PayPass prepaid card in Belgium on 13 February.
MasterCard has partnered with bpost, a Belgian
postal service provider, and the card will be called bpaid.
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For bpost, this is the first ever card
programme, which has taken 15 months to launch.
The cards can be issued and activated within
minutes because they are not customisable.
Chris Kangas, head of PayPass product
management at MasterCard told Cards International that
because card acceptance and card usage, both debit and credit, is
high, “it will require some push from the market” to position
contactless payments as a viable alternative.
“Migrating to new technologies will be challenging. This is what
we had observed in Poland, where we commenced small incentives to
get people to use their contactless cards, such as free coffee when
they use it,” he said.
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By GlobalDataFor the rest of Europe, Kangas said the roll out of contactless
payments was “business as usual”.
Speaking about the European contactless environment, he
added:
“There will be contactless momentum from the UK, France, Turkey
and Spain this year. Spain will be big news, as will be TfL’s
actions in the UK.”
The card network has consulted Clear2Pay for
the roll out process and will use Luxembourg-based Cetrel’s network
for processing and Oberthur Technologies for the issuance of dual
interface cards.
Ainsley Ward, head of management consulting at
Clear2Pay, said:
“This innovative project has been a great
collaborative learning process for both organizations as bpost is
not a traditional card issuer and so much of what is taken as known
in the cards business has had to be revisited. bpost has really
pushed the boundaries of what can be achieved in prepaid.”
