Orange Poland, mBank and MasterCard Europe offer contactless payments through mobile phones with Orange Cash

Orange customers in Poland will be the first to be able to make payments with their phones. Orange Cash, is a new service with mBank and MasterCard Europe that allows all Orange Poland customers to buy products and services easily through mobile contactless payments from November 2012.

23-10-2012 — /europawire.eu/ — Orange Polska was the first operator in Poland and one of the first in the world to launch major NFC pilot as early as in March 2011. This experience has allowed Orange to develop a service that meets customers’ expectations for a secure and simple solution for mobile payments – Orange Cash.

“I’m convinced that thanks to the simplicity and convenience of Orange Cash, our customers will embrace the benefits of mobile NFC technology,” Says Maciej Witucki, President of Orange Polska. “This is the next step, where smartphones become something much more than just a device for talking, texting and accessing the Internet. I’m pleased to say that we’re the first to launch the mobile NFC service in Poland on a large scale. Over the next year, we would like to provide it to hundreds of thousands of our customers.“

Orange is a leader in bringing NFC to consumers and building the ecosystem and standards required to make mobile NFC services commonplace globally. Orange is the only operator to have launched commercial mobile NFC services in three countries: in France (2010), UK (2011) and now Poland, as well as trials in all its major European markets.

Efficient implementation of this pioneering service required cooperation with strong and innovative partners: mBank, the leading Internet bank in Poland, and Mastercard, one of the market leaders in mobile transactions.

“mBank is a natural partner for this initiative. It can be confirmed not only by the title of the best mobile bank according to Newsweek, but most of all by four hundred thousand clients using our mobile solutions,” said Cezary Stypułkowski, President of BRE Bank. “We believe that the mobile payment market will develop quickly and mBank intends to by the leading player in this field. We confirm this statement by our participation in the project with Orange and MasterCard. We’re convinced that Orange Cash will be interesting for our existing and potential clients.”

“During the last 4 years Poland has become one of the undisputed leaders in the development of contactless payments with over one of every three payment terminals already supporting contactless Mastercard PayPassTM technology and more than 10 percent of all MasterCard transactions in Poland are PayPass,” said Paweł Rychliński, Cluster Head of MasterCard Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and Balkans. “We are one of the top three countries in the world and the first in Europe. Mobile payments for customers mean convenience and security in everyday life, so they are a strategic area of MasterCard’s development, particularly in our efforts to move to a world beyond cash. Our mission is to introduce cutting-edge solutions that transform the face of payment services – this breakthrough is possible thanks to Orange Cash.

Orange Cash is a combination of Orange SIM card and prepaid mBank card, which allows contactless payments with a mobile phone equipped with NFC module (Near Field Communication). Payments of this type can be executed in all stores and services with terminals branded with MasterCard PayPassTM logo. The SIM NFC card installed in the mobile phone works with MasterCard PayPassTM technology to allow consumers to make fast, convenient and highly secure payments by simply tapping their smartphone anywhere MasterCard PayPassTM is accepted.

Every Orange Poland customer may use the new service upon signing or extending his/her mobile phone contract and choosing a phone with NFC technology. All of these phones contain a free Orange Cash SIM card, as well as the account number to which the customer may transfer funds for contactless transactions. The accounts are pre-paid only, so customers need to add funds to their account to make purchases.

The bank card implemented in SIM is anonymous and does not require registration, however, customers may choose to register the card with mBank for free to gain access to additional benefits. For example, the first twenty thousand customers to register their cards will receive an additional PLN 15 to spend on their card accounts.

Moreover, every customer having mBank MasterCard Orange Cash card can receive cashback on purchases for three months – 50% of the charged amount (max. 50 PLN/month) if they open an mBank eKonto account and transfers funds into the account. Thanks to that they can collect up to 150 PLN cashback.

The service will be available starting from 1 November 2012, but clients of Orange using e-store and telesales will be able to pre-order the service in October.

“At Orange, we are strongly committed to the development of mobile payment and NFC services internationally, and we are delighted to launch this service with mbank and Mastercard in Poland,” said Thierry Millet, Vice President of Mobile Payments& Contactless at Orange. “Poland is our third country with commercial NFC deployments, and this is another step in the evolution of m-payment and NFC services that will come to simplify our customers’ lives in the near future.

list of mobile phones with NFC technology offered by Orange Poland

HTC One X
Nokia Lumia 610
Nokia 808 Pure View
Sony Xperia S
Sony Xperia P
Sony Xperia T
Samsung Galaxy SIII
BlackBerry Bold 9900 smartphone
BlackBerry Bold 9790 smartphone

press contacts

Wojciech Jabczyński – spokesman for Orange Polska
+48 22 527 19 39

Krzysztof Olszewski – spokesman for BRE Bank
+ 48 607 354 543

Luiza Derek – MasterCard
+48 22 526 10 90

about Orange

France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with sales of 45.3 billion euros for 2011 and has 170,000 employees worldwide at 30 June 2012, including 105,000 employees in France. Present in 33 countries, the Group has a total customer base of 224 million customers at 30 June 2012, including 166 million mobile customers and 15 million broadband internet (ADSL, fibre) customers worldwide. Orange is one of the main European operators for mobile and broadband internet services and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.

With its industrial project, “conquests 2015”, Orange is simultaneously addressing its employees, customers and shareholders, as well as the society in which the company operates, through a concrete set of action plans. These commitments are expressed through a new vision of human resources for employees; through the deployment of a network infrastructure upon which the Group will build its future growth; through the Group’s ambition to offer a superior customer experience thanks in particular to improved quality of service; and through the acceleration of international development.

France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on Euronext Paris (compartment A) and on the New York Stock Exchange.
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