MasterCard, Everything Everywhere Accelerate Mobile Payments In UK

Everything Everywhere, UK’s largest mobile operator and owner of the Orange and T-Mobile brands in that region, has joined forces with MasterCard to deliver mobile and digital payments solutions in a five-year agreement.

The first product the pair will launch is a co-branded prepaid solution for mobile devices via NFC technology. Customers will be able to make contactless mobile payments at more than 100,000 retailers in the UK.

“By moving our existing co-branded card offers onto mobile devices, we are closer to a world where our customers will be able to use their phone to pay for travel to work, pay for small purchases and take advantage of loyalty rewards from their favourite retail outlets,” said Gerry McQuade, chief marketing officer for Everything Everywhere.

MasterCard and Everything Everywhere also plan to debut other initiatives over the next five years, including person-to-person money transfers, loyalty rewards, and digital payment services that will enable consumers to have the same simple shopping experience whether they’re paying in-store, online or using their mobile device. In addition, the two companies will develop services that allow small business customers to accept payments using mobile devices, with more details to be announced later this year.

MasterCard will provide the network for the financial transaction, while Everything Everywhere will provide the network delivering other kinds of non-transactional, secure information to users: records of payments and so on, TechCrunch explained. It isn’t specified in the release whether Everything Everywhere will be using NFC-enabled SIM cards similar to those that its part-owner, France Telecom, is rolling out in France.

Everything Everywhere serves 27 million UK customers and this partnership is expected to accelerate the adoption of mobile payments in Europe. MasterCard and Everything Everywhere have already been working together successfully for the last three years on Orange QuickTap, the first commercially available NFC-enabled payments service in the UK, and the Orange Cash pre-paid card, both delivered in 2011.