Austrian mobile payments group reveals new Wallet Initiative

A group of Austria's leading banks, card payment providers and related companies have joined forces to create the Austria Card 'Wallet Initiative' in order to create an open, nationwide standard for mobile wallets. The aim of the standard is to help consumers make contactless payments with their mobile phones via a mobile card as well as enabling them to use special offers by simply tapping their phone at the checkout, in much the same way they would use loyalty cards, vouchers, and coupons.
October 31, 2013 Read time: 2 mins
A group of Austria's leading banks, card payment providers and related companies have joined forces to create the Austria Card 'Wallet Initiative' in order to create an open, nationwide standard for mobile wallets.

The aim of the standard is to help consumers make contactless payments with their mobile phones via a mobile card as well as enabling them to use special offers by simply tapping their phone at the checkout, in much the same way they would use loyalty cards, vouchers, and coupons. MasterCard and Visa payments are also integrated.

The group has conducted its first tests of the near field communication (NFC)-based standard, is running a nationwide pilot project during late 2013 and aims to be market-ready in 2014. The standard is expected to be accepted across a wide range of different providers and sectors including retail, transport, ticketing, security and banking.

Mobile network operators will also offer a secure NFC-SIM card option. Members of the initiative include Austria Card, Card Complete, Drei, Erste Bank, First Data Austria, MasterCard, Nexperts, PayLife Bank, T-Mobile and Visa.

Related Content

  • Carbon finance delivers critical support to mass transit schemes
    February 2, 2012
    David Crawford investigates carbon finance in transport. World Bank carbon finance grants are delivering critical support to major mass transit deployments in emerging and developing economies. Only recently operative in the transport sector, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM, see panel) is designed to generate additional income streams and improve internal rates of return on projects funded from public- and private-sector sources.
    Read More
  • Cubic installs mobile bus validators for Minneapolis Metro Transit
    February 25, 2016
    Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) is to install mobile validators on the Minneapolis Metro Transit bus fleet to replace previous card validators used in the Go-To smart card system. The state-of-good-repair project was awarded under a US$5 million contract. The new validators meet Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) compliance and include the capability of adding technologies in the future such as NFC-mobile payments, open payments and account-based processing. Metro Transit ordered more than 2,000
    Read More
  • 5G or not 5G?
    April 16, 2019
    Just a few years ago, there was only one solution in terms of communications protocols for delivering vehicle connectivity. Now, road operators and vehicle manufacturers face choices – including a moral choice, perhaps. Jason Barnes looks at the current state of play There is a debate raging in the ITS world over future communications protocols. Asfinag, Austria’s national strategic road operator, has announced it will from 2020 be using ITS-G5 to support cooperative ITS (C-ITS) applications (‘First thin
    Read More
  • Apriva, Metric release EMV-certified unattended parking payment in US
    April 4, 2017
    UK ticketing payment solutions supplier Metric has partnered with wireless transaction processing solutions provider Apriva in the US to achieve EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) integration and certification. This has allowed Metric to offer an unattended EMV payment solution in the US through local partner Amano McGann.
    Read More

Highlighted Content