JCB announces the launch of a pilot project using an NFC contactless credit payment scheme this autumn in Amsterdam.

This project is being run by a joint cooperation among JCB, CCV Holland B.V., Gemplus, KPN, Nokia, PaySquare, Philips and ViVOtech. With the contactless credit payment scheme, consumers can benefit from the convenience of using their mobile phone to make small payments in Amsterdam.

Selected cardmembers will be supplied with a Nokia mobile phone equipped with Philips' NFC chips, loaded with the JCB payment application. Cardmembers will be able to pay at merchants by just waving their mobile phone at the contactless payment terminal.

In the first stage of the pilot, JCB will be targeting approximately 100 cardmembers located in Amsterdam and merchants in and around the city's World Trade Center. On this scale, the pilot is primarily designed to evaluate technological aspects and operational feasibility including customer ease-of-use. The companies involved in this project are hoping to expand both the cardmember base and merchant locations as the project evolves.

This pilot will mark the very first implementation in Europe of a contactless credit payment scheme using a mobile phone with an NFC chip.

JCB's partners involved in this pilot are:

• CCV Holland for deployment of terminals and processing of the transactions,
• Gemplus to specify and develop the mobile payment application and the associated personalization solution,
• KPN for the installation of the application and personalization of the mobile phone,
• Nokia for deployment of the NFC mobile phone,
• PaySquare, JCB's acquiring partner in the Netherlands, to acquire merchants,
• Philips for consultation on and delivery of the NFC technology, and
• ViVOtech to deploy the contactless EMV readers, the ViVOpay 5000 series, to accept payment from NFC mobile phones.