Toro Development Ltd. (TORO) and KASIKORNBANK PCL. (KBank) are working together to launch the best possible mobile contactless user-experience for their customers in a pre-launch trial in Bangkok That started from the end of July 2010. Toro’s have announced on their web site that “mobile contactless technologies have proven that they provide the best possible level of security, reliability, and performance and that banking industry is now convinced that mobile contactless services will soon flourish, and help them provide better and more convenient services to customers. End-users themselves have yet to be introduced to this new payment means, and this is the challenge that KBank and TORO are taking up together”.

“TORO has been working on the NFC user-experience for 3 years to tailor a solution for banks users. They have convinced us that users should be the focus for a successful launch of this new service with huge potential”, says Mr. Art Wichiencharoen, Senior Vice President, KBank. “Their solution offers a very high level of customization, and has great post-issuance features in order to add services when user acceptance is validated and users inevitably start wanting more… It perfectly meshes with Gemalto‘s TSM platform, is compliant with VISA’s very stringent security requirements, and makes mobile contactless applications seamless.”

“We salute KBank’s initiative to launch mobile contactless services, and their concern for end-users will be key in their project’s success”, says Laurent Renard, CEO of TORO. “The time has come to change the focus of mobile contactless from technology to user-related challenges. It is now a must, if a bank or mobile operator launches without integrating the User-Interface challenges of NFC, it is bound to be a failure as the level of expectation towards mobile apps is today much higher than 2 or 3 years ago.”