MasterCard, Deutsche Telekom announce partnership

PanARMENIAN.Net - MasterCard and Deutsche Telekom have announced that they will work together to roll out services across DT’s footprint in Europe, starting with an NFC wallet solution in Poland in Q3 and Germany following soon after, TechCrunch reports.

For now, the U.S. is not being factored in as part of the deal. In all, Deutsche Telekom has 93 million mobile subscribers in Europe, and 129 million world-wide.

The deal follows on from news last week that France Telecom is also anteing up big time in the area of NFC, and will start rolling out NFC-enabled SIM cards all new subscribers in France, with further markets getting added on throughout the year.

This service will also be SIM-based, the two companies say. Under the terms of the deal, DT will be working with MasterCard’s payment subsidiary ClickandBuy, which has the e-money license that is necessary to operate mobile payment services.

While Poland looks like it will be a comprehensive roll-out, the German launch later this year will be more gradual: first a trial with mobile phone tags and cards - which will help the service roll out to devices that do not have NFC capabilities built into them; then a mobile wallet service in the first half of next year that will include other banks and partners, before expanding to other markets in the region.

MasterCard emphasized how the latter is bringing payments expertise, while DT, and its mobile brand T-Mobile are bringing the customers.

“This is a huge step on our way to increase mobile payments,” commented Thomas Kiessling, chief product and innovation officer for Deutsche Telekom, at a press event.