Mobile Stickers Get an Audition in Canada

Bank Technology News | March, 2010

A joint venture among Canadian wireless operators is planning to pilot contactless payment stickers that attach to mobile phones.

Called EnStream, it’s a firm developed by Bell Mobility, Rogers and Telus. The firm’s offerings already include ZoomPass, a mobile money transfer and payment service that allows Canadians to transfer cash to friends and family.

The new service will trial payments via a 43mm by 33mm ZoomPass tag, which is attached to a handset. It works by tapping phones against contactless readers at merchant participants, such as McDonalds, other fast food restaurants and local gas stations. The purchases, typically of lower value, are drawn from the user’s stored value accounts with ZoomPass.

Users can also monitor transactions on their mobile devices, and security is provided by storing information on secure servers as opposed to the handset.

The pilot’s not the first in Canada. Bank of Montreal, MasterCard and Research in Motion are also piloting sticker-based contactless payments. In that pilot, consumers use BlackBerrys with PayPass Mobile Tags to make payments at a network of about 8,500 merchants that allow MasterCard contactless payments.