Skip to main content

NFC payment rollout in Australia

Australia’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, is adding multiple mobile phone-based payment options to its range of mobile banking services.
March 13, 2012 Read time: 1 min
RSSAustralia’s largest bank, the 3841 Commonwealth Bank of Australia, is adding multiple mobile phone-based payment options to its range of mobile banking services. Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is providing the technology to allow secure contactless payments using mobile phones featuring Near Field Communication (NFC).

In the first phase, Commonwealth Bank is giving iPhone 4 and 4S owners the opportunity to transfer their MasterCard PayPass details onto their smartphone. Since the iPhone does not currently feature an NFC chip for contactless payment, a special cover with a secure element has been developed for iPhones to enable NFC data transfer. The iPhone cover, which can be ordered through Commonwealth Bank, is hooked up to the iPhone data interface and automatically communicates with the “Commbank Kaching” app installed on the iPhone. In the next phase, this set of mobile payment functions will also be made available to Android users.

Over the last few years, Commonwealth Bank has pioneered the deployment of contactless technology in Australia. It has supplied the bulk of its customers with contactless dual interface cards which are accepted for making payments at over 42,000 locations in Australia.

Related Content

  • December 16, 2013
    Smart phones offer smarter way to pay for travel
    David Crawford reviews developments in near field communications for mass transit payments. ‘A carefully-designed and well-implemented mobile near field communications (NFC) solutions can give passengers a compelling experience that will encourage them to make greater use of public transport.’ That was the confident conclusion of a recent joint White Paper drawn up by the International Association of Public Transport and the global mobile operators’ representative group GSMA.
  • April 4, 2012
    Shipments of NFC-enabled handsets reached 30 million units in 2011
    According to a new research report by Berg Insight, global sales of handsets featuring near field communication (NFC) increased ten-fold in 2011 to 30 million units. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 87.8 per cent, shipments are forecasted to reach 700 million units in 2016. The global rise in smartphone adoption is also driving higher attach rates for other wireless connectivity technologies in handsets including GPS, Bluetooth and WLAN. These connectivity technologies are already a standa
  • May 18, 2012
    NFC-enabled parking payment solution for Oakland
    Parkmobile USA has implemented a new mobile parking payment service in Oakland, California, that enables customers to pay for parking with their cell phone using the company's native mobile applications for iPhone, Android, Windows 7, and Blackberry smartphones anywhere in the city, but they can also choose to pay with NFC-enabled mobile phones by waving or tapping their phone on any of Parkmobile's NFC-enabled stickers.
  • December 19, 2014
    Cubic adds NFC capability to smartphones
    Cubic Transportation Systems is to integrate On Track Innovations’ Wave near field communication (NFC) device into its NextWave mobile mass transit platform, adding NFC capability to virtually any smartphone or tablet through the audio jack.