Spain-based Telefónica said it has chosen Germany-based Giesecke & Devrient as its trusted service manager as it gears up to introduce NFC services in Europe “over the next few months.”
It’s not clear, however, where Telefónica plans to launch, though it has active NFC planning going on in Spain and at its O2 operators in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Czech Republic. Telefónica said it would introduce the services through its own mobile-wallet application.
Any early 2012 launches of NFC, especially if they involved payment, would be small, since there would still be relatively few NFC-enabled phones available and almost no contactless point-of-sale terminals, except in the United Kingdom and in pockets in Spain, such as on the Balearic Islands. And O2 UK has delayed the NFC portion of its launch, through its own O2 Wallet.