La Caixa has partnered with Visa Europe on a major contactless payments push in Barcelona, rolling out cards, point-of-sale terminals and ATMs featuring the technology across the city.
The bank will this month start issuing contactless Visa cards to customers and says that by the end of the year all one million of its customers in Barcelona will have one.
Meanwhile, la Caixa is working with retailers to install around 15,000 payment terminals in stores so that the cards can be accepted, enabling customers to make purchases of up to EUR20 by tapping their plastic against readers.
After trialling the technology with Fujitsu last year, the bank is also rolling out around 500 new contactless ATMs, with at least one in every branch in the city planned for the end of the year.
The partners say that although they are concentrating on cards, the mass deployment also means that Barcelona will be ready for mobile NFC payments in the future.
The la Caixa Barcelona news comes on the heels of a similar move in Madrid, where BBVA, Bankia and Visa Europe are planning to install 7000 NFC-enabled terminals across the city.
La Caixa is also the host sponsor for the inaugural MobeyDay conference, a new one-day event which will draw mobile professionals from across Europe to discuss and debate the latest trends in mobile banking and payments. Organised by Finextra and the Mobey Forum, MobeyDay takes place in Barcelona on 21 March.