Optus assists Westpac on NFC payment pilot

Optus and Westpac have teamed up for a contactless payment pilot project using Android phones with near-field communications capability. French company Oberthur Technologies has provided its trusted service manager platform for the project.

“Mobile services and devices have been provided by Optus as the mobile partner for this project,” an Optus spokesperson confirmed.

Using the Oberthur platform, Westpac can embed a secure element into an ordinary SIM card, letting customers with NFC-enabled Android phones make purchases securely, Oberthur said. “Once the users’ virtual debit card has been personalised on the phone, participants will be able to pay for goods simply by tapping their phone onto contactless payment readers at the checkout,” the company said.

The project “is one of the first and most recent times where an Australian financial institution is not utilising bridging technologies such as NFC-enabled phone cases, microSD’s, or stickers to facilitate mobile NFC payments,” said Oberthur managing director Asia, Roswell Wolff.

Westpac recently announced it was testing contactless Android payments with MasterCard.

Westpac is not the only bank changing the way Australians make payments. Commonwealth Bank recently revealed an Android-based payment station with a touchscreen and apps including a calculator to split bills. The bank is to also working to launch Facebook banking by the end of this year.

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