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Telefónica Germany has announced it is moving forward with its planned expansion of the telco-owned e-commerce payment scheme mpass to the physical point of sale, but has apparently dropped plans to introduce its own brand.

France’s No. 2 mobile operator SFR is the latest telco with plans to get into the payments market, today announcing it would roll out a contactless co-branded prepaid card with the help of MasterCard Worldwide, with the intention of expanding the service to NFC phones.

Elisa, one of Finland’s largest mobile operators, hopes to introduce its own payment application on SIM cards in NFC phones around the end of 2012, following the planned launch of contactless payment stickers in September.

Mobile operator Telefónica group and Visa Europe have expanded their payments partnership to Telefónica’s European operations, marking the third tie-up between a major European mobile operator group and international payment network this year.

Deutsche Telekom intends to make its move into the payments market at the physical point of sale in direct competition with banks, with an NFC payments commercial launch planned in Poland this year, before later expanding to Germany and other European countries.

MasterCard Worldwide and Germany-based Deutsche Telekom group have signed a partnership agreement that will help the telco launch a prepaid PayPass application for its planned NFC mobile wallet, NFC Times has learned.

France-based Gemalto has announced its long-held agreement to serve as the trusted service manager for the U.S.-based Isis joint venture, which plans to launch its NFC platform next year.

France-based smart card vendor and trusted service manager Gemalto said today its telecommunications unit is working on at least 20 NFC and LTE commercial deployments, some of which could launch before the end of 2011.

German mobile operators Telekom Deutschland, Vodafone Germany and Telefónica Germany today announced an agreement to form a joint venture to expand their mpass mobile payment service to the physical point of sale using NFC technology.

Germany-based Giesecke & Devrient has announced it has won a contract from Deutsche Telekom to develop NFC-enabled SIM cards for the telco group's NFC wallet rollouts.