Weve, the mobile advertising and payments joint venture formed last year by UK mobile network operators Vodafone, EE and O2, aims to launch a mass market NFC payments service "by next year", CEO David Sear has told the Financial Times.

"Weve hopes to have a system whereby mobile users can tap their phone at the till to use a discount offer, a second time to collect the loyalty points, and a third to pay the bill — all of which has been encouraged through advertising sent to the person's phone or tablet," the newspaper reports:

Mr Sear believes that Weve can surmount some of the obstacles that have slowed progress by building a single platform across three of the four UK networks, with most smartphones adopting the NFC technology needed for contactless payments.

He says that the timing is right, given that the technology that facilitates mobile payments has been integrated into most new smartphones as well as into point of sale payment equipment in about 250,000 retailers and coffee shops across the UK.

"There is a single deal, single technical agreement with a neutral, device-agnostic platform," he says. "We want to be mass market straight away — which means at least 50 per cent of consumers by the end of next year."