Everything Everywhere, Vodafone and O2 join forces for NFC drive

Everything Everywhere, Vodafone and Telefónica UK, which owns O2, are launching a joint venture to create a standardised platform and coherent measurement system for mobile contactless payment.

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The joint venture, the first of its kind in the UK, will provide a single contact point for advertisers, retailers, media agencies and banks to make it easier to implement mobile commerce services.

The new business will enable brands to book advertising space and create offers, coupons, transport and event tickets and loyalty cards to be stored on consumers’ smartphones and redeemed in shops.

The venture will deliver the technology required for speedy consumer adoption of near field communications (NFC) services, that will allow them to transfer the entire contents of their physical wallets on to a SIM-based storage system on their mobiles.

Everything Everywhere, Vodafone and Telefónica UK will continue to develop their own competing mobile wallet services tailored to their own customers, based on the platform provided by the new joint venture.

Ronan Dunne, chief executive officer of Telefónica UK, says: “The mobile marketing and payments market is extremely fragmented.

“By creating this new business we will underpin this nascent market, providing real size and scale, allowing consumers to benefit from new innovative services, like the mobile wallet, and giving them more of the things they value, through offers and deals that are truly relevant to them.”

The joint venture is set to launch before the end of the year.

Orange, part of the Everything Everywhere business, and Barclaycard became the first brands to launch mobile contactless payment in the UK, under their Quick Tap service.

O2 is set to launch its own mobile wallet service in the coming weeks.