RBC Mobile payments app now includes HCE

The application from the Royal Bank of Canada now supports host card emulation to broaden usage capabilities.

The mobile payments app from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has now announced the addition of support for host card emulation (HCE), in a move that it says will give Canadians the ability to use Android based smartphones to complete purchase transactions without having to worry about having the right type of SIM card or being on the correct network.

The bank has built on its existing platform, called the RBC Secure Cloud to encourage smartphone payments use.

According to RBC, this change to its app is “allowing Canadians to pay with most Android mobile phones without worrying about being on the right mobile network or having the right SIM card.” The service will give customers with virtually any Android smartphone that is NFC technology enabled the opportunity to make mobile payments at merchants equipped with Interact Flash contactless POS terminals. The smartphones will function as an alternative to using a traditional debit card.

This new mobile payments technology will be piloted over the winter months by employees of RBC.

They will be using a number of different mobile networks and types of Android device, said the bank. This trial will not yet be testing the support for MasterCard, Visa, and other types of credit card, and other types of value added service, though the bank did confirm that those would be coming “shortly.”

The RBC executive vice president for digital, payments and cards, Linda Mantia, stated that “We are committed to providing our clients with the most innovative, convenient and secure solutions to pay how they want, when they want — HCE is a critical step.” She also added that through the use of HCE, the smartphone based payments by way of the RBC Secure Cloud become “even easier to use”.

The bank first started developing its mobile payments app back in 2009, and it has gone through a number of different evolutions and additions. This addition of HCE is only the latest move by the bank, which is among the players that are attempting to act the most quickly in order to grab hold of the largest proportion of the Canadian smartphone transaction market.