Finnish fuel company Neste has included the Apple Pay feature in its mobile application – the Neste app.
Apple Pay was introduced in Finland and the Baltic countries for app users who activated Apple Pay on their iPhone.
The popularity of mobile payments has grown strongly among the Finnish group's customers.
In 2020, the total number of users of the app quadrupled, and more than a million payments have already been made through the app.
Customers paid for multiple car washes through the app compared to the previous year, while mobile payments from corporate refuellers doubled in this period.
Dennis Stolt, head of mobile development, Neste's marketing and services business unit, said, "The growth in popularity among our corporate customers has also been strong.
"The Neste app acts as a company's virtual payment card, which makes payment much easier and faster. At the same time, the number of plastic cards will also be reduced."
Secure Payment
With Apple Pay, users can securely pay through the app with all credit or debit cards added to their own Apple Wallet. Deploying Apple Pay requires updating or downloading the latest version of the Neste app from the app store.
Stolt added, "Ease of payment is playing an increasingly central role in the customer experience today. In addition, safety and hygiene factors have increased in importance, especially during the corona situation.
"As many as 27% of mobile payment users who responded to our survey last autumn said that the interest rate had a significant or somewhat more frequent effect on choosing a phone as their primary payment method. By incorporating Apple Pay into the Neste app, we can make it even easier for motorists to pay mobile.”
Earlier this month, Neste reported an operating profit of €1.41 billion in full-year 2020, alongside total revenue of €11.75 billion, following what it said was a year of 'challenges and disruptions'.
© 2021 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Conor Farrelly. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
