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United States-based Citigroup Inc. and United Kingdom-based mobile operator Vodafone Group plan to launch a large Near Field Communication trial in Bangalore, India that would involve the local transit operator, a Citi executive tells CardLine Global sister publication Cards&Payments. Users would tap their contactless mobile phones to pay transit fares and make payments with merchants at or around transit stops. Citi and its partners might distribute more than 1,000 phones for the test, which could make it one of the largest NFC tests to date in terms of phones and users. An ongoing NFC trial in the French cities of Caen and Strasbourg has 1,000 users, but most trials have fewer users. "We want to get into bigger numbers," said Dion Lisle, senior vice president for growth ventures and innovation in Citi's global consumer group. "It's got to scale," he said this week at the Mobile NFC conference in London operated by Informa Telecoms & Media. "It's got to build confidence." Lisle said the bank wants to go beyond the usual 100 to 200 participants in NFC trials to grasp consumer response to the technology. Indeed, handset numbers in the Bangalore test could reach 2,500, Lisle suggested. He said plans call for using the new Nokia 6212 NFC phone, which the company expects to make available by the end of September. The project, which would involve Vodafone Essar, part of the Vodafone Group, tentatively is planned to begin in November. Users likely would use the phones to pay fares on Bangalore's bus system through a proprietary payment application. The project would not be Citi's first involving NFC phones and transit-fare payment. The bank helped lead a trial last year that enabled riders to pay fares on a New York City subway line by tapping NFC phones that stored a MasterCard Worldwide PayPass application. Lisle told conference attendees that mobile financial services generally remain an important part of the bank's plans. "NFC is part of that, in the U.S., in Asia, in Europe," he says. "It's absolutely part of our future."
