Vodafone Group today announced the launch of an NFC mobile-wallet and payments service in Spain and timetables for similar launches in four other European countries–all featuring Vodafone’s own co-branded prepaid payment application, SmartPass.
Besides the launch in Spain, Vodafone said its Vodafone Wallet and SmartPass payments service would start in mid-December in Germany and next spring in the UK, the Netherlands and Italy.
In all but Italy, the SmartPass prepaid service would support a Visa payWave EMV application, as part of Vodafone’s partnership with Visa Europe. Vodafone Italia had an earlier deal with MasterCard that has already yielded a prepaid SmartPass card supporting MasterCard’s PayPass. This would expand to NFC phones in the spring.
Vodafone Spain had already said in September it planned to launch by the end of the year and other markets were expected to follow.
Vodafone Group had originally planned to launch NFC services in five European countries as part of the Visa partnership by February of 2013, after having announced the agreement with Visa a year before that. The original five included Turkey. But the telco put off the launches.
“We have been watching this space closely; it’s quite a complicated space to get everybody working together,” a Vodafone spokesman told NFC Times today. “With the NFC handsets coming into the market and, in Europe, (especially) in the UK and Spain, you’re starting to see more and more sales points where you can use your contactless phone. People can use it now instead of waiting for it to roll out.”
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Among Topics Covered:
•Vodafone’s planned NFC-enabled mobile wallet and payments services
•European telcos that are launching NFC-enabled branded or co-branded payments services or with plans to do so
•Vodafone’s business case and those of other European telcos for delving more deeply into payments
Among companies and organizations mentioned:
Vodafone
Visa Europe
MasterCard Worldwide
Orange
Telecom Italia
Deutsche Telekom
Telefónica
Everything Everywhere
Intesa Sanpaolo
Wirecard
Gemalto
SK C&C/CorFire
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