Coles to build new mobile wallet

Supermarket giant Coles is set to build out a new digital payments service that can be used in physical stores and online channels.

The existing Coles pay tag.

The project was revealed in a statement by semiconductor firm Rambus, which said Coles’ new service would be underpinned by the vendor’s unified payment platform.

Unified payment platform is essentially a secure mobile wallet that can digitise “payment, gift, loyalty cards as well as coupons and receipts”.

Little was said about what Coles’ plans are for the platform aside from it underpinning the “build [of] their new digital payments solution” - at what Rambus called “a very exciting time of change for the payments industry”.

A Coles spokesperson has been contacted for comment.

“We believe that our experience in providing card, mobile and account-based solutions for banks, financial institutions and retailers alike will allow us to bring the future of payments to Coles’ customers," senior vice president of security products Jerome Nadel said in a statement.

Coles already has a mobile wallet app for iOS and Android that it introduced back in 2014.

The app works in conjunction with a near field communications (NFC) tag that could be stuck to the back of a phone and used to make contactless payments.

Mobile payment technology has changed significantly since that app was launched, including the availability of a wider array of handsets with embedded NFC capabilities.