Now in its eighth year, the Contactless & Mobile Awards (sponsored by Visa Europe) have yet again attracted a record turnout, making it an important fixture in the contactless calendar and recognising the global acceptance for contactless and NFC technology.

The 2015 Contactless Intelligence Contactless & Mobile Awards honour achievements across a wide range of sectors and countries throughout Europe and further afield. “We’ve seen entry numbers grow year-on-year, highlighting the dynamism of this burgeoning industry,” said Steve Atkins, Editor-in-Chief of Contactless Intelligence and CEO of Krowne Communications, the company behind Contactless Intelligence. “Whereas other award ceremonies focus on behind-the-scenes technological innovations, we honour those firms that are really making a difference in getting contactless devices into the hands of users and encouraging consumers to engage and discover what a positive experience this technology can deliver.”

New for 2015 are three categories; ‘Contactless ID and Security’ ‘Unattended’ and ‘Gamechanger’. “Contactless Intelligence created these three new categories for 2015 because we felt that the first was an element that is becoming of paramount importance to consumers and the second one was a reflection of the next huge growth area for contactless technology. The third was created to honor those companies that the judges felt had contributed new ideas and approaches to the industry that will literally ‘change the game’,“ added Atkins.

This year’s CMA champions accepted their trophies at a gala dinner at Tower Bridge Hilton, London, on April 28, 2015. The winners are:

• Contactless Payment Collaboration – Zapp (United Kingdom)
• Retail – Sunoco and Verifone (USA)
• Transportation and Ticketing – Transport for London (United Kingdom)
• Innovation – Clear Channel (United Kingdom)
• Customer Experience – ING Bank Śląski (Poland)
• Loyalty – S-Bank (Finland)
• Marketing Campaign – Saatchi & Saatchi (Switzerland)
• Unattended – Nayax (Israel)
• Eco-System – MSI Global (Singapore)
• Contactless ID & Security – Airside Mobile (USA)
• Gamechanger – Cubic Transportation Systems and Transport for London (United Kingdom)
• Industry Awards – SMARTLINK (Switzerland)

In addition, Visa Europe presented its Visa Contactless Award for Contribution to Contactless to Tami Hargreaves, COO of Barclaycard (United Kingdom), while Emanuele Cacciatore, SVP – Head of SME Client, Bank Pekao (Poland) took ownership of the Visa Contactless Business Leader of the Year prize.

“The Contactless and Mobile Awards are an important part of the industry calendar and Visa is proud to once again be a sponsor. The quality of this year’s nominations demonstrates an unprecedented wave of innovation in the world of payments, making it a truly revolutionary payment technology. Even though contactless is now available for consumers across most of Europe, our work is far from complete and the next couple of years will be critical to the sustained success of both contactless and mobile payments. Our effort and collaboration will be essential to enhancing consumer awareness and extending the ubiquity of contactless solution,” said Nick Mackie, Head of Contactless at Visa Europe (Corporate Sponsor of the CMAs).

Atkins said: “The quality of award entries continues to improve each year, demonstrating that contactless is fast becoming a technology that brings advantages to citizens and businesses alike. Whether it’s to increase throughput, to reduce the amount of cash used by a firm, or to encourage spending, more merchants are choosing to give contactless a go. And they are being encouraged to do so by consumers who are rapidly recognising the benefits of the technology in terms of convenience and time saving.”

This year’s judges included Wendy Atkins – Contactless Intelligence [Head Judge], Mark Austin – Visa Europe, Michel Barjansky – ex RATP, John Berry – European Commission (Research & Innovative Transport Systems), Paul Chamberlain – Association of Convenience Stores, Hank Chavers – Technical Program Manager, Global Platform, Paul Crutchley – GSMA, John Devlin – P.A.ID, Kevin Farquharson – Smart Card Networking Forum, Kristian T. Sørensen – Mobey Forum, Stefan Schmidt-Egermann – Certgate, Samee Zafar – Edgar Dunn.

Master of Ceremonies for the evening, once again, was Mark Jones.

“The number of firms that now want to talk about what they are doing with contactless globally is encouraging for the industry, but it makes the judges’ job tougher every year,” concluded Atkins. “We’re grateful for the time everyone spent analysing the input in some very tough categories. There were some particularly strong entries in certain categories, such as Innovation and Customer Experience which meant some of the results were incredibly close.”