Howard Berg, senior vice president, Gemalto UK & Ireland which worked on the roll out of the Quick Tap project, said:
“The rollout of mobile contactless payments marks a major milestone in technology and how it is enhancing peoples’ lives and changing long-standing consumer habits. Consumer organisations have made great strides in making this a reality – consumers are already using their mobile phone for mobile banking, transfer, emails so this is the natural next step. NFC technology turns the mobile phone into an extremely fast, secure and convenient means of payment. As users soak up the benefits of this new payment means, we could expect a wide scale roll out of the service by other banks and operators.
Understandably, security remains a key concern for users, but using mobile devices for NFC payments brings two major additional advantages in this respect. Firstly, the payment user interface application running on the phone can – at the issuer’s discretion – provide the ability to request for a PIN code to be entered before any payment is possible, even for small amounts.
Secondly, if the mobile is lost or stolen, the NFC payment issuer via the Trusted Service Manager, can immediately remotely ‘lock’ or even delete the contactless payment application from the mobile. This is an exciting time for UK consumers.”
