A conjoint program of Royal Bank of Canada, Visa and Rogers Wireless

[img_assist|nid=7085|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=63]One more NFC payments program is being launched in Canada. Having consolidated their forces Royal Bank of Canada, Visa and Rogers Wireless are preparing for the next phase of a mobile phone payment pilot. First they will introduce the employee pilot, then in the middle of 2009 the customer phase of the mobile phone payment trial will start.

Within the frames of the trial program participants will be issued with specially-equipped mobile phones that can simply be waved at Visa payWave-enabled checkout readers at select retail stores and quick-service restaurants in Toronto's downtown core. The mobile phones outfitted with Near Field Communication (NFC) contactless chips will be provided by Motorola. These cell phones will allow users to make payments using the Visa payWave feature just as they would with a contactless RBC Visa card.

This pilot program is intended to test secure over-the-air (OTA) delivery of mobile payment software and credit card information to a customer's mobile phone. It will be the first test of the kind launched in Canada. The transfer of credit card information from RBC to the secure SIM card in the Rogers Wireless NFC-enabled mobile phone will be managed by Gemalto, that currently produces RBC Visa chip cards.