‘La Caixa’,  one of the Spanish leading financial entities, and ‘Telefonica’, the main provider of telecommunication services in Spain,  initiate a national pioneer experience which allows to do the shopping using  NFC (Near Field Commincation)-enabled mobile phones.

With this initiative, supported by Visa, Samsung and Sitges Council, La Caixa and Telefónica customers will be able to pay in a store just by tapping the POS (Point of Sale) terminal. The phone SIM card converts itself that way into a virtual mobile wallet, with capacity to store multiple cards and where the user can store personalized financial cards with advanced security measures.

La Caixa will be the issuer of a Visa card to place in the SIM and will also administer the POS devices enabled to accept payments by mobile phones. Samsung will provide the NFC-enabled terminals used by the participants in this pilot while Gemalto will supply the NFC service platform and SIM cards.

This innovative project, called ‘Mobile Shopping. Sitges 2010’ is the first one developed in Europe in a real scenario with such a high volume of participants. The objective is to analyze and determine how to obtain the best user experience and validate the service model to promote the use of mobile phones for shopping.