U.K. Telco Partnership Weve Bails On NFC

When first unveiled under the name project Oscar, Weve was a collaboration between British telecoms EE, Telefonica and Vodafone to grab a piece of the set-to-ignite-any-minute mobile market in 2012.

The tool of choice for that grab was a SIM-based platform that would enable NFC payments.  That project was later refocused as a clearing-house for B2C mobile marketing.

A February deal was with MasterCard emerged to push ahead  the payments plan with a vow by  Weve  to bring NFC-based m-payments to the masses.  The plan was to build on MasterCard’s relationships with banks to reach the customer.  The goal was to see customers then tie their pay cards to the mobile phones through a banking app.

It was supposed to launch in 2015, but Finextra reports that launch has been scuttled over conflict over how the system should be run. It probably also didn’t help matters that Apple announced their entrance into the market with their own NFC payment platform during the second week of September 2014.

“We continue to believe there is a great deal of potential in mobile contactless payments and we are currently working on developments where Weve can help streamline the mobile payments process,”  Weve told Finextra in a statement.

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