The 10th Contactless & Mobile Awards (sponsored by Visa Europe and Visa Europe Collab) have once more attracted a record turnout, making it an important fixture in the contactless calendar and recognising the global acceptance for contactless and NFC technology.
The 2016 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 the 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 and mobile technology into the hands of users and encouraging consumers to engage and discover what a positive experience this technology can deliver.”
This is the tenth anniversary for the awards and this year the organisers felt that it was time to do a consolidation of award categories to reflect the ever-changing face of the industry. “Many of the categories were becoming too similar,” commented Atkins. “At the same time we wanted to shine a light upon new areas for growth including Bitcoin payments and the blockchain. We hope that having a category such as Next Generation Ecosystem will also draw attention to the fact that some of this ‘new’ technology could soon be underpinning ‘older’ technology”
This year’s CMA champions accepted their trophies at a gala dinner at Tower Bridge Hilton, London, on April 26, 2016. The winners were:
- Payment innovation – Paykey (Israel)
- Retail & Loyalty – Ingenico Group / schuh (UK)
- Transport & Ticketing – Kentkart (Turkey)
- Contactless & Mobile City Initiatives – Cork City Centre Forum (Ireland)
- Payment security – Spire Payments (UK)
- Next Generation Ecosystem – Yoti (UK)
- ID & Authentication – Bank Pekao (Poland)
- Mobile wallet – Points (Canada)
- Industry Award – Tech Mahindra (India)
Tech Mahindra – Pete Bottomley, Neeraj Kapoor
In addition, Visa Europe presented its award for Contribution to Contactless to Paul Fletcher – The Co-operative Food, while Jatin Patel – TSB took ownership of the Business Leader of the Year award.
“Visa Europe has been a proud sponsor of the Contactless Intelligence Conference since 2007 which forms an important part of the industry calendar, recognising excellence in the world of contactless payments. With more than 1-in-5 Visa face-to-face payments in Europe being contactless, the technology is changing the way people throughout Europe pay for the things they want or need, while paving the way for future technologies such as mobile and wearable payments. Ongoing collaboration between all stakeholders, including merchants, issuers and fintech innovators remain key to its continued success and development,” said Nick Mackie, Head of Contactless at Visa Europe (Corporate Sponsor of the CMAs).
One final award, the Contactless Intelligence Decade Award was given to The UK Cards Association for their work over the last decade on the topic of contactless.
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, Kevin Farquharson – Smart Card Networking Forum, Claire Maslen – GSMA, Kristian T. Sørensen – Mobey Forum, 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 Next Generation Ecosystem and ID & Authentication, which meant some of the results were incredibly close.”
Photo Credits: LarryJ (fb.com/larryjdotphotography)
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