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Turkish operator Turkcell has announced it has launched a pilot among employees of the first nonbank-issued application for its NFC mobile wallet, enabling users to tap their phones to redeem food vouchers at restaurants and cafés.

Update: The trial enables about 50 Turkcell employees to pay for meals with prepaid meal vouchers loaded onto SIM cards in the T20 NFC phone, which Turkcell introduced last month as its own branded handset. The employees also can use an NFC bridge technology to participate.

For the trial, which began three months ago, Turkcell has put a serial number from a Mifare application on its SIMs to identify users and allow them to redeem vouchers. For a planned second phase of the trial, the telco will develop a larger “Ticket Restaurant” application and deliver it over the air to the SIM cards. Besides the T20, trial participants can use SIMs connected to flexible antennas that will work in an additional 50 handset models, according to Turkcell. End update.

The telco, the largest in Turkey, launched it’s NFC mobile wallet, Cep-T Cüzdan, in April, using bridge technologies and the older 2G Samsung S5230. In July, it introduced the T20, a relatively low-cost 3G Android phone made for it by Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei.

The first application for the wallet was PayPass, issued by Yapı Kredi bank. Garanti bank is also issuing a PayPass application for the phones or plans to do so.

Turkcell has said it will introduce other nonbank applications, such as transit ticketing and loyalty programs by the end of the year.

Ticket Restaurant meal voucher application could be one of them. And Edenred, formerly known as Accor Services, might be looking to offer the mobile-contactless version of its food voucher service in some of the other 40 countries where it operates. Using “technology to develop innovative and differentiating solutions is an important component of Edenred’s global strategy,” Hikmet Özsoy, Edenred Turkey assistant managing director for sales and marketing, said in a statement.