Movistar Chile gets started with a NFC pilot

FRANCES: Oberthur Technologies, a provider of security, identification solutions and services based on smart card technology, announced its selection by Movistar Chile, a major mobile operator in Latin America, and Banco Santander Chile, a retail and commercial bank in Latin America, to be their Trusted Service Manager (TSM) and provide an end-to-end solution for their Near Field Communication (NFC) pilot.

After the initial trial with selected end-users and participating shops in the Santiago area, the service will be opened throughout Chile with 5,000 compatible payment terminals expected by the end of the year.

The complete NFC solution provided by Oberthur Technologies includes a TSM to deploy and manage the service Over-The-Air (OTA), NFC SIM cards, a Mobile PayPass payment application and a convenient mobile wallet allowing end-users to activate their payment cards and view their transactions history from their Samsung Galaxy S3 phones.

Banco Santander's MasterCard payment card will be fully secured by the NFC SIM card, providing higher security than magnetic stripe payment cards that are currently used in Chile. Once the payment card is activated on their NFC SIM cards, the end-user will be able to pay for goods simply by tapping the phones onto contactless payments terminals, as the announcement explained.

"Following previous NFC initiatives with other affiliates of Banco Santander and Telefónica Groups, the selection for this key project in Chile, the first of its kind in Latin American South Cone, reiterates our trustful relationship. Relying on our technology, they will provide their customers with a secure and convenient mobile payment method," said Arnaud de La Chapelle, Managing Director, Solutions Business Unit at Oberthur Technologies.

"A rapid nationwide take-off of the service is expected in the coming years. We are paving the way to the deployment of other mobile contactless services besides payments, such as transport and loyalty programs. This joint trial with Banco Santander and Oberthur Technologies represents a real step forward in the deployment of NFC in Chile, and more generally across Latin America," said Paula Figueroa, Marketing Director at Movistar.

"We chose Oberthur Technologies to be our TSM provider for the comprehensiveness of its NFC solution and because of its experience in supplying the required security level for such sensitive services," said Magdalena Assef, Head of Mobile Payment at Banco Santander.