Shared office users pay for coffee and snacks with NFC

PiggyBank NFC payments

Users of a shared workspace in Prague are paying for drinks and snacks with contactless cards thanks to an NFC payments solution developed by a local company.

The PiggyBank system now in use at The Hub Prague was put together by local software developer T16.biz. A Nexus S phone serves as a payment terminal, and users are issued with NFC tags to identify themselves at The Hub’s bar.

The Nexus S is used solely as a full-screen payment terminal, explains T16.biz’s Peter Kmet, with all phone functionality disabled. The device is delivered as an appliance, meaning that the merchant does not have to deal with a phone interface or launching apps. WiFi is used to communicate with a back end server that holds a user database and transaction log, Kmet told NFC World, and a web-based user interface allows administrators to access billing information and provision new tags via an external NFC reader attached to desktop or notebook PC.

“Members appreciate that paying for snacks does not require them to have the right change anymore,” says Hub manager Barbora Tupa. “Monthly consumption simply pops up in their membership invoice.”

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