Students offered ‘no touch’ payment system

HELSINKI - Finnish telecommunications company Elisa, which is alsos active on the Estonian market, together with student-owned company Lyyra has signed an agreement on a new contact-less payment method, reports LETA. The system will enable more than 100,000 students to perform a new type of payment starting from this autumn.
The Elisa Lompakko service provides a payment sticker for contact-less payments, separate online payment cards, an online and mobile application as well as money transfers between users. These payment tools have been developed in collaboration with MasterCard.

From autumn 2012, students will be able to pay, for example, for lunch at many student cafeterias via the Elisa Lompakko system. In addition to student cafeterias, contact-less payments can be made via the service in other locations that use payment services based on near-field communication (NFC) card technology.
The company says the Elisa Lompakko payment sticker is a quick and safe way of making small payments, of up to 25 euros. Payments are made by touching a reader with a mobile phone that carries a payment sticker compatible with the MasterCard PayPass™ technology. Payment stickers will be issued free of charge to Lyyra student card holders from the end of September until the end of 2012.

In the Elisa Lompakko service, users can create online payment cards with validity periods and payment limits of their choice. With the online payment cards, users can easily upload funds to the Elisa Lompakko service and online payment cards via online and mobile user interfaces, which also allow for money transfers among users. Identification takes place via mobile certificates.

In the early stages, the use of Elisa Lompakko requires that a payment sticker be attached to the mobile phone. In the next development stage, the contact-less payment application will be included in the SIM card, which will render payment stickers unnecessary.

Elisa is a telecommunications and ICT service company. The company increased its first quarter net profit by 6.3 percent year-on-year to 3.8 million euros. Sales revenues grew by eight percent to 24.8 million euros and the number of clients by 14.5 percent to 578,000.

Manager Sami Seppanen said that mobile data communications volumes have grown three times in the past year due to the popularity of Smartphones.

Market share for the firm in Estonia is 30 percent. EMT has the leading market share of 45 percent and Tele2 has a market share of 28 percent.