Merchants in Poland are to be the first to pilot a new service that enables them to accept contactless payments of any amount “via a smartphone or tablet, in the same way a traditional payment terminal functions but with no additional equipment”.

The pilot will use SoftPOS technology developed by Samsung Electronics and will be run in partnership with Visa and First Data.

Due to go live by the end of 2019, “the pilot programme will expand thereafter, initially in the EMEA and APAC regions,” Samsung says.

“SoftPOS enables this functionality on an everyday mobile device using embedded near-field communication (NFC) functionality,” it adds.

“The merchant’s phone will accept contactless transactions from existing contactless cards, other NFC-enabled mobile phones, or other NFC-enabled devices such as wearables and key fobs.

“Samsung Electronics, in partnership with Samsung Knox, provides multi-layered security protocols in both hardware and software, as well as providing a vast array of the most innovative mobile devices.”

“This project could only launch in a country where contactless payments are highly popular, and Poland is among global leaders in this method of payment,” says Katarzyna Zubrzycka, Visa’s head of merchant sales for Central Eastern Europe.

“With this technology, we are able to rapidly expand access to card and digital payments across Poland, even for the micro business owner who is still in many places accepting only cash today.”

“Thanks to [the] defence-grade Samsung Knox Security Platform, customers can be sure that their payments will be safe,” adds HS Myung, vice president of Samsung Electronics’ global mobile B2B team.

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