Scope:
Trial
Large Italian bank, Intesa Sanpaolo is distributing 600 Samsung Wave 578 NFC phones to customers, employees and students at universities in the northern Italian cities of Milan and Turin for the trial
NFC Times Take:
The big Italian bank has been interested in contactless payment in Italy for the past few years, though the rollout of contactless cards and terminals in the country remains small. It had issued at least 100,000 dual-interface contactless cards as of early 2010. But the bank’s interest in contactless payment and its funding of the large NFC trial, including phones, SIMs and POS terminals, indicates Sanpaolo is serious about an eventual commercial launch of NFC mobile payment.
* Trusted Service Manager: Defined loosely to include companies or other organizations securely distributing, provisioning and managing applications, generally over the air, on secure elements in NFC mobile phones; or licensing their platforms for this purpose.
N/A: Not available or not applicable.
Last update: Feb. 2012