Canadian carrier Rogers is to make an open NFC mobile wallet available to its customers "in the coming weeks." The new Suretap Wallet, which is separate from the Suretap payments service launched last November in partnership with CIBC, will allow Rogers to work "cooperatively with all banks to ensure numerous cards from many different banks are available in the Suretap Wallet."

Suretap Wallet will enable NFC payments "on select Android and BlackBerry devices" and will give customers access to additional features including "gifting of gift cards, reloading of prepaid cards, the ability to check account balances, view recent transactions and use location services to find contactless payment terminals nearby.

The wallet will initially offer a co-branded virtual Rogers Prepaid MasterCard as well as "gift cards from select national retailers".

"The arrival of our mobile wallet is a major step towards our vision of a mobile experience, where Canadians will quickly and securely access cards they carry in their physical wallet on their smartphone," says David Robinson, VP of emerging business at Rogers.

"We have built a strong foundation to deliver financial services and mobile commerce solutions, and we will continue to deliver mobile payments experiences that are beneficial for consumers and retailers across Canada."

"We designed the Suretap Wallet to deliver a secure mobile payments experience, with an emphasis on the end user and features which enable our customers to take advantage of all the capabilities of today's smartphones," adds Jeppe Dorff, VP of transaction services at Rogers.

"We see this milestone as the first in a series of innovative transactional services we will be offering to our customers in the coming years."