Contactless payments: Intesa Sanpaolo launches payment ring with Mastercard

Intesa Sanpaolo is the first bank in Italy to offer its customers a new Payment ring: a wearable device that allows them to make contactless payments simply and securely.

This wearable ring can be linked to the customer's Intesa Sanpaolo Mastercard card. To pay for purchases in contactless mode, the customer needs only to hold the ring up to the POS terminal, as when making a payment by physical card or smartphone.

Through this deal, Intesa Sanpaolo confirms its position as the first-mover in Italy in offering cutting-edge digital payments solutions, strengthening its leadership in terms of range of instruments and attentiveness to customer needs.

The Payment ring is produced by Tapster – a Swedish company with a focus on cutting-edge contactless payments –and its integrated NFC chip requires no battery charging or Internet connection to function.

Payments made with Intesa Sanpaolo wearables use the MDES tokenisation technology provided by Mastercard, which guarantees the highest level of security.

The wearables market is growing rapidly and is a crucial part of the future of consumer electronics.