PKO Bank Polski launches mobile payment service covering all payment situations

PKO Bank Polski has launched IKO, the first and largest commercial rollout of a mobile payment service that covers all payment situations. The IKO service is based on Accumulate’s mobile financial services platform ME and Pera Mobile.

Stockholm, Sweden – 14 March 2013 – PKO Bank Polski has launched IKO, the first mobile payment service that covers all payment situations. The roll-out includes all Bank’s ATMs and ultimately more than 65000 POS terminals of eService, the Bank`s daughter company. From start IKO supports:

• Point of Sale (POS) - pay in store, at restaurants, etc. (including future support for NFC)
• Online - pay at online stores
• P2P - real-time money transfer person-to-person to beneficiaries identified only by their telephone number
• Cardless cash withdrawal from ATMs
• Money vouchers – offline timed vouchers for shopping payments and ATM cash withdrawals
• Account balance, transaction history and other mobile bank services
  

“The possibility of paying by a telephone creates brand new quality regarding convenience, availability, as well as meeting of customers` expectations. Combination of banking and transactional functions in one device is a real breakthrough. We are pioneers in mass mobile payments in Poland, and this proprietary solution has realistic chances for becoming a local mobile payments standard in the European market”, says Piotr Alicki, CIO at PKO Bank Polski.

The IKO mobile payment service is available for PKO customers and at the service launch available on Android and iOS systems (ultimately also on BlackBerry, Symbian, Java and Windows Phone).

The mobile payment service is based on Accumulates mobile financial services technology platform, Mobile Everywhere (ME) and Pera Mobile, the global open technology standard for mobile payment. The basic solution have been customised and functionally extended within PKO Bank Polski`s project, thanks to the support of HP and Accumulate. With the ME platform ALL mobile payments, mobile banking and mobile security services can be enabled using ONE platform. More services like mobile ticketing, loyalty, coupons and gift cards can easily be added to mobile service based on Accumulates technology.

Accumulate’s partner HP is responsible for the full project at PKO, from requirement and specification, to the implementation, system integration and development of the banks backend systems.

“We are of course very proud and this is great news and yet another example of how our technology, processes and methods enables attractive, secure and easy to use mobile payment services. With IKO mobile payment users now get a secure, fast and easy to use alternative to cash”, says Stefan Hultberg, CEO of Accumulate.  

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About PKO Bank Polski

PKO Bank Polski is a Polish banking sector leader. Its consolidated net profit for the year 2012 totalled PLN3.75 billion. It is a Polish company with the highest value of free-float shares on the WSE. The bank has been regularly recognised in prestigious industry rankings. The Polish Accountancy and Tax Institute honoured the PKO Bank Polski Annual Report for the Year 2011 with the Grand Prize in The Best Annual Report competition, in the Banks and Financial Institutions category. It has now been the winner in that category for the second consecutive year.  PKO Bank Polski also received the Grand Prize in Bank monthly’s ranking of the 50 largest banks in Poland for 2012: among others, for growth rate of its balance sheet total and its overall market activity. Also, Gazeta Bankowa awarded the Bank for the highest performance in its category. PKO Bank Polski once again came out the winner in the survey of call centres of banks carried out by ARC Rynek i Opinia. PKO Bank Polski is also the country’s strongest image bank. It retains the position of the highest worth brand in the Polish banking market according to the prestigious The Banker magazine, which assessed the PKO Bank Polski brand value at USD1.25 billion. The Most Valuable Polish Brands Ranking 2012 of the Rzeczpospolita daily listed the PKO Bank Polski brand as the most valuable one in the finance category; its worth set at PLN3.72 billion. PKO Bank Polski is also the highest value domestic bank in Poland; this according to the Newsweek magazine’s ranking of the 100 most valuable companies. Philanthropic activities of PKO Bank Polski met with recognition of the Academy for the Development of Philanthropy in Poland, which granted the bank and its Inteligo Financial Services the Benefactor of the Year 2010 statuette, and of the Polish Donors Forum, which granted the bank the Special Award for its longstanding and consistent support of public interest causes. A ranking based on an opinion poll of students has recognised the bank as one of the best employers of the banking sector. This high position achieved by bank in the employer category has been further confirmed through the surveys carried out among students of Poland’s best universities by the international Universum Global and AIESEC. Please visit the web site at http://www.pkobp.pl/.