Polish bank ramps up mobile payment capability with HP/Accumulate technology

By David Bannister

PKO Bank Polski has introduced a mobile payment service that covers all payment situations. The roll-out includes the bank’s ATM estate and will eventually reach more than 65,000 POS terminals operated by eService, a subsidiary of the bank.

Called IKO, the service is based on the Mobile Everywhere technology platform from Stockholm-based Accumulate, and Pera Mobile, the global open technology standard for mobile payment. The basic solution has been customised and functionally extended within PKO Bank Polski’s project, with assistance from HP and Accumulate.

HP was responsible for the full project at PKO, from requirement and specification, to the implementation, system integration and development of the banks back-end systems.

With the ME platform all types of mobile payments, banking and security services can be enabled using a single platform. Additional services such as mobile ticketing, loyalty, coupons and gift cards can be added

The initial IKO service supports point-of-sale payments, which will include support for NFCin the future; online payments; person-to-person transfers using a proxy phone number; cardless cash withdrawal from ATMs; account balance, transaction history and settings such as PIN number.

“The possibility of paying by a telephone creates brand-new quality regarding convenience, availability, as well as meeting of customers` expectations. The combination of banking and transactional functions in one device is a real breakthrough. We are pioneers in mass mobile payments in Poland, and this proprietary solution has realistic chances for becoming a local mobile payments standard in the European market,” said Piotr Alicki, chief information officer at PKO Bank Polski.

The IKO mobile payment service is available for PKO customers and at launch is available on Android and iOS systems. It will also be ported to BlackBerry, Symbian, Java and Windows Phone environments.