ING Bank Romania Rolls Out ING Pay Mobile Payments

So as Snapcash exits the market, as we found out earlier today, so too does another company enter the market. This time, it’s ING Bank Romania, which rolled out the eponymous ING Pay as a means to give its customers access to a mobile payments platform.

Those who want to use ING Pay should find it simple; after upgrading the ING Home’Bank application, users can from there activate ING Pay on any Android device currently running Android 4.4 or better. That’s “Kit Kat” or better for those who favor the sweet names. Reports suggest that Apple users won’t be left out in the cold much longer, though there will be a bit of a wait.

ING Pay users get a virtual card issued to them upon activation and without charge. Users can activate the system on two phones which have been registered as “trusted devices”, and once near-field communications (NFC) capabilities are enabled, just getting the phone close to the point-of-sale (POS) terminal allows the payment to go forth.

It can even be used outside of Romania at any POS terminal that will take contactless payments. Adjustable limits help provide security and budgeting capability no matter where you spend, and customers get notification of every payment made, whether they know about the payment or not.

While this might seem to be a disaster in the making—just how is ING Pay planning to compete against all the other pays in place right now?—there’s a clear silver lining here for ING Bank Romania. ING Bank Romania doesn’t really need this to succeed to win; even a modest victory is a victory nonetheless as the ING Pay system is just one revenue channel among likely several, if not dozens, of others. Even if only a modest number of users come on board, that’s a little extra bump to the bottom line. Given the increasing trend to go mobile these days, ING is likely to keep some users in the fold, which increases the chances of them using other ING services.

ING Pay likely won’t make a big splash in the mobile payments field, but it doesn’t really have to. If it makes the current customers happy and makes ING a few extra bucks, then mission accomplished.