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NFC Times Exclusive – Vodafone Group’s proxy-card NFC mobile-payments offer, which is designed to enable subscribers to add their credit and debit cards to their Vodafone Wallets as funding accounts linked to a Vodafone prepaid card stored on the SIM, has yet to be launched by any major Vodafone branch operator in Europe.

Everything Everywhere, the UK’s largest mobile operator, will promote its own payments service with its planned launch of NFC this month.

Visa is reportedly gearing up to support a “mainstream launch” of NFC mobile payments, along with a cloud-based digital wallet, according to Marc O’Brien, managing director of Visa UK and Ireland.

While a sizable percentage of UK consumers say they are ready to use their smartphones as mobile wallets to make payments at the physical point of sale–especially if they receive incentives and security assurances–mobile wallets are unlikely to take off in 2013, according to UK-based market research firm ICM Research.

The European Commission announced today it has unconditionally approved the creation of a proposed mobile-commerce joint venture by the three largest operators in the UK, Everything Everywhere, Telefónica UK and Vodafone UK.

Google and PayPal have reportedly expressed concerns to European antitrust regulators, saying they fear that if major UK mobile operators are allowed to form their proposed NFC mobile-commerce joint venture, they would have too much power to control secure elements in NFC phones, the Financial Times reported Sunday.

Telefónica UK, known as O2, launched its long anticipated O2 Wallet today, offering text-based money transfers and online product searches and purchasing, but no NFC yet.

The United Kingdom’s three largest mobile operators have filed their application with European antitrust regulators, seeking approval for their proposed joint venture to help them roll out NFC mobile wallets and services.