Danish Banks Lean on Host Card Emulation for Interoperable Wallet

Bokis, a consortium of 62 small- to midsize banks in Denmark, will launch an NFC-based digital wallet this fall powered by host card emulation (HCE) that will be available to all its members, according to Nets A/S, the Denmark payments technology firm heading the wallet’s development.

Nets will use HCE, which allows developers to add NFC-based mobile payments without having approval to integrate it in the phone's hardware, and tokenization to store the consumer card credentials of participating banks’ mobile wallets in the cloud. The initiative will leverage Japanese card issuer JCB’s J/Speedy contactless card technology to enable NFC payments for debit card payments across Denmark, Nets said in a June 30 press release.

The Bokis mobile wallet will be available to all customers of participating institutions, which include many small Danish banks, along with larger regional banks Jyske Bank, Sydbank, Spar Nord Bank, Arbejdernes Landsbank and Nykredit Bank.

The Bokis partnership, backed by a group of small, local banks plus the Danish Regional Bankers Association, was formed in 2014 to drive international acceptance and interoperability for cards and payments. Nets, based in Ballerup, Denmark, earlier won a contract to handle the organization’s payments technology initiatives.

Søren Nicolaisen, managing director of the Danish Regional Bankers Association, said Bokis will be the first entity in Denmark enabling individual banks to offer their customers proprietary mobile wallets enabling contactless payment at NFC-enabled terminals using their smartphones.

Nets, which stands for Northern European Transaction Services, develops mobile payments solutions for banks and merchants across the Nordic region, said Hans Henrik Hoffmeyer, the company's senior vice president of mobile services. “We have made significant investments on behalf of our customers in becoming a token service provider [to enable development of the Bokis platform],” he said.

Denmark is at the forefront of the move to eliminate cash. The country’s leaders and banking industry are aiming to be a cashless society by 2030, and the Danish government already is allowing shops to accept no cash.