Mastercard Poland's general director Bartosz Ciołkowski presented a working Soft POS during the Impact Fintech congress taking place in Katowice. The Soft POS is a mobile app that lets users accept contactless payments directly on their smartphones. Guests at the congress could test out the new solution at Mastercard's stand - and I couldn't help doing so myself, but more on that later.

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During the presentation in Katowice Ciołkowski suggested that the company’s Soft POS is the first solution of this kind in the world. A similar project will soon be implemented in Great Britain. So far, the Soft POS, developed by Polskie ePłatności and the Canadian company Mobeewave, can accept payments of up to 50 zł that do not require PIN code authorization. In the future the app will most probably also accept bigger transactions.

Polskie ePłatności representatives told me that the Soft POS app is almost ready, and a pilot program will start in the first quarter of next year with a selected group of payment accepters who express interest in using the new solution. This might include current Polskie ePłatności customers or other businesses that sign a contract with the company.

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So how does the Soft POS work? If the app offered to customers will work as well as the one I had the opportunity to test out in Katowice, it will have a chance at success. The application is very simple. First, we enter the payment amount, then hold a card against the back of the smartphone and wait one or two seconds. The device will vibrate when the transaction is accepted. The payer will have the option of providing an email address to which a payment receipt will be sent.

As you can see above, I successfully payed 1 zł for a hypothetical purchase using the Soft POS. Unfortunately, it was just a pretend payment - for now the app only operates in a test environment. As I mentioned before, it will enter a production environment early next year, once the pilot program begins.