Nine Polish banks are to commercially launch mobile payments based on Visa’s Host Card Emulation (HCE) solution early in 2015, the credit card giant said.

The banks backing Visa’s cloud technology are ING Bank Śląski, mBank, Bank Millennium, Raiffeisen Polbank, eurobank, Getin Bank, Bank Polskiej Spółdzielczości, Bank SMART and Bank Zachodni WBK.

The banks will be able to offer HCE-based payment apps to users equipped with NFC-based Android handsets so they can make contactless payments.

Visa and MasterCard are at the forefront of pushing HCE technology to banks for mobile payments.

Elsewhere in Europe, Spain’s Bankinter and BBVA support Visa’s cloud technology. And the card giant added there is “a strong pipeline of further launches planned in markets including France, Italy, Slovakia and many others”.

Poland is an early adopter of contactless payments, which presumably influenced the banks when it came to mobile payments