Westpac NZ launches PayTag

Westpac New Zealand, which is forging its own path away from the other three big banks on mobile wallets, has launched a PayTag contactless payment sticker for customers' mobile phones.

Westpac said the sticker would be available to all its Mastercard contactless card customers, who could use them to make payments of up to NZ$80 at a Paypass terminal without using a PIN.

Westpac's chief product officer, Shane Howell, said feedback from a Westpac PayTag trial earlier this year had been overwhelmingly positive.

The stickers can be used on any phone, which does not need to be turned on, although the Frequently Asked Questions part of the PayTag website said phones with near field communications chips may need to turn off the NFC ability.

The PayTag will be competing partially with Semble, a digital wallet application that works on Android NFC phones. Semble was launched earlier this month by a consortium of Paymark (the payments system owned by the big four banks) and the three mobile phone networks - Spark (formerly Telecom), Vodafone and 2 Degrees.

Semble also formed a marketing partnership with Samsung, which is the biggest manufacturer of NFC-enabled phones and which issues about a fifth of the five million phones in New Zealand.

Customers with Commonwealth Bank of Australia's ASB and National Australia Bank's BNZ can use Semble, which is also in talks with ANZ. Westpac has opted out of Semble and is pursuing its own strategy and technology on mobile wallets.

Westpac New Zealand has also gone in its own direction by only offering Mastercard credit cards, while its parent in Australia has a partnership with Visa.

Westpac New Zealand said its PayTag sticker was developed in partnership with Gemalto and was protected by secure encryption technology. PayTag was also covered by Mastercard's Zero Liability policy for unauthorized transactions.

"We are also trialling host card emulation 'digital wallet' technology which enables credit and debit card details - and over time things like transport cards, loyalty cards and potentially ID - to be accessible from Android smartphones," Howell said.

"This will be available to our customers from early next year," he said.

Westpac charges NZ$4.99 each time PayTag is ordered by a customer, but said it would waive the fee for an unspecified initial period.