Australia’s ANZ Bank says it will not pursue mobile contactless payments via NFC-enabled MicroSD cards following a failed pilot of the technology this past spring, according to ZDNet.
ANZ partnered with Visa to launch the service in March, which required users to equip their iPhone or Android handset with an special case featuring a MicroSD card pre-programmed with a user’s banking information. To make payments, users needed to open app on the phone and tap it against a Visa PayWave contactless reader, says ZDNet.
The trial, which concluded in April, involved 50 ANZ and Visa employees in Sydney and Melbourne using the payment technology from DeviceFidelity.
Although ANZ will not pursue MicroSD as a vehicle for contactless payments, the bank says it is remaining open to other forms of the technology:
“We have found in our research that our participants strongly supported contactless payment as a convenient way to pay, but the MicroSD technology did not meet all of our requirements,” ANZ told ZDNet. “At this stage, we will not be progressing with MicroSD as a contactless payment technology platform, but we will continue to look for ways to support contactless payments in the market.
“Overall, we found the trial extremely useful as it confirmed that customers like to use contactless for low-value transactions under $100,” said ANZ. “Contactless is an extremely exciting piece of innovative technology and we’re looking forward to seeing how we can implement it for our customers in the future.”
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