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A Turkish bank and retailer will enable consumers to use contactless cards and loyalty programs in more than 170 supermarkets and hypermarkets in that country, according to a statement Wednesday from MasterCard Worldwide. The scheme will use MasterCard's PayPass contactless application. The cards also will enable the accumulation of loyalty points through the Axess scheme, which includes at least 160,000 merchants, and Carrefour Plus, the proprietary loyalty program operated by Carrefour, a retail chain whose Turkish stores will accept the contactless payments. Turkey-based Akbank also is taking part in the program, called "Carrefour Axess." France-based Carrefour Group has embarked on a major contactless-payment effort. The company's financial-services arm earlier this year announced plans to deploy as many as 4,600 contactless-payment terminals in its stores (CardLine Global, 27 March). The company earlier had said it planned to issue 2.5 million PayPass-enabled cards by 2010. Immediate comment from MasterCard, Carrefour and Akbank was unavailable Wednesday.
