Following the August rollout, a joint effort by experts from Bank Millennium and Visa, customers can use our mobile app to quickly and easily create a virtual equivalent of their card (debit, credit or prepaid) and use this virtual product in parallel with their conventional plastic. Thus all Bank Millennium cardholders will be able to pay conveniently with their phone using HCE (Host Card Emulation). Virtualising the card and using the service is free of charge.

The parameters of our virtual card will be the same as in its plastic equivalent. It will not be necessary to define new PIN numbers or set-up new limits, while cancellation of the plastic card will be equivalent to cancelling the virtual card. Thus there is no need to issue a special card dedicated to phone payments, although an option is provided to issue dedicated purely virtual debit cards.

Customers who create a virtual counterpart of their card or a new, completely virtual card in the Bank Millennium app will be able to pay with their phone wherever contactless is accepted. All it takes is to unlock the phone and bring it to a POS terminal, just as when paying with a conventional contactless product. Transactions over 50 zloty [€12] must be PIN-confirmed. HCE payments require a phone powered by one of the most popular operating systems, Android 4.4 (or newer), with an NFC aerial and the Bank Millennium mobile app.

Tokenisation helps keep consumers’ card details secure as wherever token data is stored, the underlying card details remain unexposed when consumers make a payment with a ‘tokenised’ payment service.

If a consumer’s phone is compromised, they only need to cancel the token - their underlying card will still work. Plus, if their card is lost or stolen, the token in the Millennium App will still work, so that they will not be without access to their funds.

The number of Bank Millennium mobile service users has increased by 42% over the past year. We continue to expand our app to include new solutions, making everyday life easier for customers.

According to this year results of Visa’s annual Digital Payments Study, 77% Polish consumers say they are Mobile Money users - someone who uses their phone, tablet or wearable to manage their money or make a payment in person, online or in-app. Even more - i.e. 85% - of millennials are Mobile Money users. Banking is the most popular mobile money activity (67%), ahead of paying a household bill (52%) and online shopping for general goods (50%).