Telefonica to build ‘NFC District’ at Madrid HQ
06 April, 2011
category: NFC
Telefónica has announced plans to outfit some 12,500 employees at its Madrid headquarters with NFC phones – a project it calls “the first real NFC experience in Europe.”
The initiative, aimed at creating an “NFC District” in Madrid, is being carried out with numerous partners, including Spanish banks BBVA , Bankinter and La Caixa, handset provider Samsung, POS terminal provider Sermepa, secure tech companies G&D and Oberthur, and Visa, who will process the payments on its PayWave platform.
The project will start with one thousand Telefónica employees outfitted with NFC handsets from Samsung. Employees can use the handsets to make contactless payments at retail outlets on the business campus and around the area. Employees can also access their offices by simply bringing the handset up to the entry turnstile, or load their “meal cheques” into the phone to pay for meals at company catering facilities. The project will eventually expand to incorporate all 12,500 of Telefónica’s District C employees.
Guillermo Ansaldo, Chairman and CEO of Telefónica Spain, comments: “By launching this initiative, Telefonica aims to prepare for deployment in Spain and lead the way in NFC development. It is estimated that the number of NFC-enabled mobile handsets will reach 260 million in 2014, while the value of transactions will surpass 80 billion euros worldwide.”
According to Ansaldo, this project marks the first international effort to bring the NFC experience to a real corporate environment.