In its beta phase, Semble now allows users to pay for parking, taxis, cable car fares, bus fares and even coffee by holding their smartphone over Snapper readers at certain facilities throughout the New Zealand capital.
Snapper, a wholly owned subsidiary of Infratil, which also owns NZ Bus, is a contactless payment system that takes the form of a bank card and allows users to tap and go to make a purchase. According to Snapper, the technology is supported in over 4,000 places across Wellington.
The mobile wallet app was released in March 2015, following its pilot trial in November 2014.
Semble is a consortium supported by the countrys three mobile network providers, 2degrees, Spark and Vodafone, partnering with two of four banks, ASB and BNZ, as well as the EFTPOS transactor Paymark.
Westpac New Zealand, however, is not a part of the Semble club, instead adopting host card emulation (HCE) technology as part of a joint effort with TSM New Zealand.
HCE is one method of employing near field communication (NFC) for contactless payments by storing customer details in the cloud. Around 18,000 NFC-capable terminals are now deployed in New Zealand, with Westpac the first bank to trial HCE in the country.
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