In Strasbourg, MasterCard will support a seven company-strong consortium, including Groupe Crédit Mutuel, CIC and NRJ Mobile, to enable 200 residents to make contactless payments via mobile phones at 50 retailers in the city. In the first EMV-enabled mobile commerce trial of its kind, the specially designed phones from Sagem Communications will contain EMV-compatible SIM cards from Gemalto, contactless readers from Sagem Monetel and Near Field Communication electronic chips designed by Inside Contactless In Toulouse, MasterCard will work with LaSer Cofinoga, the consumer finance arm of Groupe Galeries Lafayette, to enable a thousand of the latter’s customers to test a contactless payment card at participating Galeries Lafayette and Monoprix stores throughout the city. It will be the first contactless EMV-enabled multi-application card in Europe, for use in retailers and for public transport in the city. In the UK, RBS, which is currently undertaking the first Maestro® PayPass™ trial in Europe at its Edinburgh headquarters, will be extending the project to its London offices, in order to showcase its contactless low value payments experience to the UK’s retail community. This follows a time-and-motion study of the Edinburgh experience, in which the six participating merchants – including Starbucks, a restaurant, a delicatessen, a chemist and a social club – found that Maestro PayPass could halve the time taken for a cash transaction, making a payment possible in less than 5 seconds. louise_herbert@mastercard.com www.mastercardworldwide.com