Germany’s Deutsche Telekom today launched its much-anticipated–and also much-delayed–NFC-mobile wallet, which features its own branded prepaid mobile-payments application that will anchor a promised mobile-commerce platform.
Unlike most other telcos introducing their own prepaid payments services on NFC SIM cards, such as Vodafone and Orange, Deutsche Telekom will issue its own payments application. For this, it will use its wholly owned online payments unit, ClickandBuy, which has an e-money license in Europe. The applet running on the telco’s SIMs will support MasterCard PayPass.
In addition, Deutsche Telekom today said its Slovak Telekom branch in Slovakia would launch NFC payments later this month and its Magyar Telekom unit in Hungary would introduce an NFC wallet later this year. Deutsche Telekom owns majority shares in both these mobile operators, which are the largest telcos in their respective markets.