During a meeting with journalists Mastercard representatives announced a Polish market pilot program for a new Soft POS - an app that lets you accept card payments directly from your smartphone. The project will involve a cooperation with eService, which will join two other companies working on their solutions in this area - Elavon and Polskie ePłatności. But eService's project will differ from the ones already in progress.

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PeP is already running a pilot program, and Elavon is about to start one, prepared in cooperation with Mastercard and Canada-based Mobeewave. Both programs are aimed at accepting contactless payments using cards and smartphones directly on a mobile device, but only up to the amount that does not require entering a PIN code. This currently sets the transaction limit at 50 zł (11.5 euro).

This results from safety regulations that are currently in force, which require caution when entering a PIN code on sellers’ devices. The PCI council (an institution that defines safety standards in the payment industry) recently allowed the use of a solution called PIN on glass, which is used for entering the code on a seller's smartphone. It said, however, that data from the card should be read using a so-called dongle - a special device that connects to the smartphone. Such a dongle, which separates card data from the smartphone, will be used in eService's new Soft POS solution.

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As you can see, the new Soft POS project is not strictly a Soft POS, but it will be the first solution on the Polish market to test out the adaptation PIN on glass among customers. In other European countries such projects are already in progress. Several months ago, I wrote about one of them, carried out by Mypinpad in cooperation with Ingenico, one of the biggest payment terminal manufacturers in the world.