The wireless carrier and bank will work together to bring the technology to Canadian smartphone users.
Canada has just moved one step nearer to having its own mobile wallet service available, as the largest wireless carrier in the country, Rogers Communications, and a major national financial institution, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) have announced that they will be working together on its launch.
In fact, they stated at a news conference that this Canadian first will be available before the end of 2012.
The head of retail banking at CIBC, David Williamson, “It will no doubt change the way Canadians pay for purchases.”
By the end of March 2012, Rogers reported having 9.3 million wireless customers. CIBC is the fifth largest of all of the national banks in the country. The wireless carrier will be paying the bank a flat per-credential fee every time one is added to its SIM cards.
The banking industry in Canada as a whole came up with – and has now published – a blueprint for setting standards and security for NFC transactions. This technology is becoming available in an increasing number of smartphones. The guidelines have been created jointly by the banks and credit unions in Canada, in response to a government-sanctioned report which was issued at the end of 2011, that indicated that the country was dropping behind in the worldwide progress toward mobile wallets, commerce, and payment transactions.
The Rogers president of communications, Rob Bruce, stated that “Today we’ve taken a giant leap forward.” He went on to say that 60 percent of the postpaid customers at Rogers use a smartphone device, and that among them, there are already 300,000 that are enabled with NFC technology. Bruce added that “In a few years, a digital wallet will be just as common on a smartphone as a camera is today.”
The chips that provide the NFC technology to a device make it possible to both hold secure data and wirelessly exchange it over a very short span, so that they can communicate the mobile wallet information with the reader devices that will be used by participating merchants.