NFC payments are coming to the UK on the wings of what is, to American eyes, a unicorn. A mobile operator and a bank are teaming up to bring NFC payments to holders of Barclaycard and Orange credit card accounts. The trusted services manager is Gemalto. No word yet on how open the platform will be. But, come to think of it, with Isis getting off the ground in the US, we have our unicorn now. Isis is a collaboration of Barclaycard and Discover working with Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, and AT&T. Next, we’ll see if either of these rare beats can fly.
Orange is teaming up with Barclaycard to deliver the UK’s first commercial contactless mobile payments service.
Set to launch early this summer, the service will be available to customers of Everything Everywhere, the mobile network formed by the merger of Orange and T-Mobile.
In order to use the new service, customers must have a Barclaycard or Orange credit card account and a handset with a built-in NFC chip. Then it’s just a matter of waving the phone in front of a reader at the point of sale to complete the purchase.
Read more at: http://www.nfcnews.com/2011/01/27/orange-barclaycard-to-launch-contactless-mobile-payment-this-summer