Australia’s bank Westpac has announced it will allow owners of some Samsung devices to make NFC contactless mobile payments from next week.
Customers owning the Samsung Galaxy S4, the soon-to-come Galaxy S5 and the Note 3 device (with a software update) will be able to use the new service which Westpac developed with Visa.
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The bank said it expected that 3m Australians will use mobile payments in 2015 to make nearly $3bn in payments.
"We now have 50% of our logons to digital banking coming through mobile," said Andy Kerr, head of everyday technology at Westpac.
However, the service will not be available to iPhones because the Apple devices do not integrate the NFC technology allowing contactless payments.
"At the point when Apple make a way of paying available that’s in the integrated hardware and software, we’ll be pleased to help them with it but here and now, today, it’s not capable of making NFC payments," said Kerr.
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By GlobalDataLast year, Commonwealth Bank (CBA), launched a similar service for smartphones running Google Android operating system and integrating an NFC Chip. At the time, chief information officer Michael Harte blasted Apple for falling behind on mobile payments.
So far, Apple has been favouring Bluetooth technology over NFC.
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