equensWorldline rolls out co-badged wearable in Europe for KBC customers

By Megha Bhattacharya

equensWorldline, a subsidiary of Worldline, today announced that clients of the Belgian bank insurer KBC can now execute via the first co-badged wearable in the world. The development will allow users to make payments via multiple payment schemes with various types of devices.

KBC will be offering client payments via wearables after its successful pilot in 2019, which involved 1,000 users. The majority of the participants responded positively and half of them said that ease of use was the main benefit.

Daniel Braeckman, General Manager BeLux at equensWorldline, said, “We are proud of this milestone. Paying via wearables has not only become more popular due to the Covid-19 crisis, it has also become more important as it is enabling contactless payment, while improving customer experience. Contactless payments are the future and co-branding is a next important step in the evolution of this payment method. Customers are looking for user-friendly payment methods and co-badged wearable payments meet these requirements. We are pleased to be at the forefront of this innovation.”

Recently, equensWorldline and comdirect have extended their existing service agreement enabling the former to process the bank’s new Visa debit card via its API based WL Extended Issuing service. The company stated that through flexible adjustments to equensWorldline’s front and back-office systems, the service aims to enhance customer experience and efficiency.

Ivo De Meersman, Director of Payments & Cards KBC Belgium said, “We are proud to be the first bank in Belgium to offer our customers this new and easy way of paying. It was a challenging project that could only be realised thanks to the good collaboration with equensWorldline, among others. Customers with a wearable can now pay for their purchases safely and conveniently in a very user-friendly and stylish way. Contactless payments have been on the rise since the corona crisis. Where previously one in five payments were made contactless, today we see that one in two customers pay contactless.”