Orange’s mobile wallet app Orange Cash became available nationwide in France on 19 October. The app supported by Wirecard was piloted in six French cities before the national rollout. Wirecard writes that over 3,000 retailers, including Ikea, Picard and Relay, are participating in the launch phase to support the new service. Orange Cash customers with NFC-enabled smartphones just need to tap to pay at any contactless Visa terminal in more than 324,000 stores across the country and at 2.8 million acceptance points throughout Europe. The mobile payment programme was already launched in Spain in the second quarter.
Orange Cash combines contactless mobile payments with real-time loyalty and coupon deals from participating retailers through Wirecard’s card-linked offers platform. The system is based on a prepaid account with a digital Visa card, issued by Wirecard Card Solutions. The cards are provisioned over-the-air onto NFC-Sim cards and managed through a TSM integration of Wirecard’s platform with the Orange network. Wirecard is using Trusted Service Manager (TSM) technology from Oberthur Technologies.
