German bank Landesbank Berlin (LBB), in cooperation with Swiss Post Solutions, started a pilot project to provide contactless iPhone payments via Visa payWave in Germany. Berlin-based LBB is the largest credit card issuer in Germany (with over 2.2 million cards issued). The bank plans to implement contactless payments via mobile phones nationwide by the end of this year.

As the iPhone doesn’t support Near Field Communication (NFC), LBB is issuing an iCaisse phone case which holds a microSD-card and a NFC-antenna. The credit card information necessary for the authentication of a transaction is stored securely on the microSD-card. The payment is triggered by an iPhone-App. The customer can choose between two different methods: on automatic mode, amounts of less than 25 Euros are authorized without password entry, on manual mode, the previously defined password has to be entered for each payment.

Dr. Tilo Schürer, head of direct marketing Landesbank Berlin AG commented: “Our customers can test the new payment method and can see the benefits themselves. Due to the increasing proliferation of smartphones they will be used quite naturally for payments in the future – this saves our customers valuable time and enables them to use their credit and prepaid cards even easier.”