If you’ve been waiting for the chance to use your Nexus 5 to pay for your shopping, that time has arrived. Cuscal, whose NFC Host Card Emulation mobile payments trial we reported on in March, has published CUA redi2PAY to the Google Play store for CUA customers.
In an Australian and Asia-Pacific first, any CUA customer with an Android 4.4 phone and a Visa Debit card can now use their phone’s NFC functions to make payments at Visa PayWave terminals around Australia.
Unlike other solutions, Cuscal’s redi2PAY technology isn’t limited to particular handsets by prior arrangement with the manufacturer. Users are free to bring any handset which meets the requirements and the service will work for them.
Chris Whitehead, CUA’s Chief Executive Officer, nails why this is a huge step forward for Android in the mobile payments space:
There’s no stickers, no waiting for your bank to certify your handset. Everything just works. It’s a fundamentally better way to do things, and that’s what Google envisaged when they added NFC Host Card Emulation to KitKat.
CUA’s website now has a new section
Cuscal is clearly proud of their achievement, and deservedly so.
When we first saw redi2PAY in March, it was essentially a bare-bones debug app that displayed all of the authentication and transaction information to the user. In the intervening months, the UI has been streamlined for customers and the signup process properly baked into the app.
redi2PAY technology is now available to Cuscal’s Australian client base, either as a white-label branded app (as seen here for CUA) or as an API that clients can integrate into their own services. We look forward to seeing where it’ll be released next.
Click here for our previous coverage.
If you’re a CUA customer, you can download redi2PAY and get started right now:
[pb-app-box pname=’au.com.cuscal.redi2pay.hcelite.cua001′ name=’CUA redi2PAY’ theme=’discover’ lang=’en’]
If you’re a customer of any other bank or financial institution in Australia with an Android app for mobile payments? The standard has been set. Start asking your bank when they’ll bring NFC Host Card Emulation to you.
Is using your phone’s built-in NFC to make payments important to you?
