United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc has issued over three million near field communication (NFC) technology-enabled contactless cards to its customers.
The card, introduced in 2015, enables customers pay with ease by leveraging on the NFC technology.
Speaking in Lagos, the group managing director of the bank, Mr. Kennedy Uzoka said the payment solution was developed to ease transactions as well as make life simpler for its customers in all parts of the world.
Uzoka said UBA remains a leader in the e-banking innovation space, stressing that the cards are protected with the best in class security tools.
“We have driven other initiatives such as the acceptance of international cards on our point of sale (PoS) terminals and that UBA PoS are now NFC-enabled.
“Our PoS terminals are also enabled for dynamic currency conversion (DCC), which means customers and non-customers using foreign payment cards on our PoS can see their transaction value in the currency of their card or home country; this aids transaction tracking and personal account reconciliation,” he said.
The bank’s group head, cards, Dr. Yinka Adedeji, described the contactless cards as a “milestone.”
“We are delighted to reaching this milestone. Our customers have found out that with our contactless cards, they make payments for everyday essentials and other things that money can buy the contactless way, and these cards can be used across all the channels where you use your regular card – automated teller machine (ATM), PoS and Web,” he said.
The NFC technology allows wireless communication between devices that are a few centimetres apart. The NFC payment card uses microchips/antenna to transmit data via shortwave radio frequencies.
Usually, when one NFC-enabled device is close enough to another NFC device, a connection can be established and data shared between them. The card communicates data to the reader to initiate and complete the transaction using NFC technology.
Furthermore, the bank stated that in addition to the contactless cards, it had issued over 10 million debit and prepaid cards, serving both customers and non-bank customers in its countries of operation.
