[skeletal88]

The benefit of NFC for banks would be an image and PR boost, the bank could say that they are the hip and trendy bank, come to us. Then other banks would have to follow eventually.

Why else would banks in europe adopt NFC or contactless payments?

[arghwhat]

I am only speaking for a single EU country here. In DK, features such as NFC are released for all banks simultaneously (that is, fully implemented and functioning) through the national payment provider, who is also the issuer for our national credit card type (which is a dual-type card by also being a VISA for international use, and is tied directly to a bank account). I don't think they have a choice, and they certainly gain no PR or image from it.

Now, the national payment provider (a private company) does it because they earn money on terminals, and want to fight to stay relevant in a world of emerging mobile payment solutions such as MobilePay (a Danish mobile payment solution of which over half the population are users).

The only exception to this rule appears to be Apple Pay, which is implemented by some individual banks. I am not sure if this is due to platform differences, or whether it is just the national payment provider fighting back. I'd suspect the latter, as Apply Pay just see our dual-type credit cards as VISA, sending them transaction fees that the national payment provider lose out on.

Other than that, banks here are only differentiated based on their financial solutions, and maybe in some rare cases by their mobile/internet banking solution (all have feature complete variants, but some are nicer than others).