The Commonwealth Bank and Coles have separately announced stickers that can be attached to smartphones in order to enable contactless payments.
While NAB joined with Telstra and Visa to run Australia's first trial of contactless mobile phone payments in late 2011, and ANZ and Westpac started theirs about a year ago, as far as CRN affiliate BIT is aware, Commonwealth Bank is the only one of the big four banks to announce the general availability of this capability.
The Commonwealth Bank's CommBank PayTag will attach to an iPhone or Android smartphone and is used with the latest version of the CommBank app (announced today for iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8). This combination lets users turn the contactless payment function on and off as desired, as well as selecting which account is used as the source of funds.
CommBank PayTag is "coming soon" according to the bank's web site, as is support in the CommBank app for payments via the NFC chips built into certain smartphones.
Meanwhile, Coles and GE Capital have launched a consumer trial of Coles Pay Tag involving around 5,000 Coles Mastercard customers. Coles Pay Tag is a sticker that carries an NFC chip for contactless payments using MasterCard PayPass technology, along with a Flybuys barcode.
Coles Pay Tag apparently can be used independently of a phone, but a supporting app for iOS and Android is promised for early next year to add unspecified functionality - our guess is that it will have similar capabilities to the CommBank app.