ING to pilot UWB for contactless P2P payments

Dutch bank ING is to pilot a payments feature that uses ultra wideband (UWB) technology to enable consumers to make peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile payments.

The solution — known as NEAR — will allow users to settle P2P payments with other NEAR users via ING’s banking app simply by holding their UWB-enabled smartphone close to another UWB phone.

ING has developed the solution with NXP Semiconductors and Samsung and will carry out an internal pilot with users of UWB-enabled Samsung smartphones in the second half of this year.