UK wireless company Everything Everywhere has just signed a muti-year deal with MasterCard for NFC. The Telegraph reports that the deal between Everything Everywhere, which owns T-Mobile UK and Orange UK, and MasterCard will see Orange and T-Mobile customers gain the ability to use their phones to make payments at 100,000 retailers around Britain. The deal will expand to include shopping online and sending money to other people.
"Our vision is of a world beyond cash and the phone is a key tool to driving this step-change," The Telegraph cites Marion King, president of MasterCard UK & Ireland, as saying. "As the sophistication of smartphones continues to evolve, and the mobile payments ecosystem starts to open up, I believe that people will use their mobile phones in lieu of a traditional wallet and start making higher-end purchases, such as white goods or even cars, all through their phones."
This isn't the first time Everything Everywhere has made attempts to start its own NFC service. In May of 2011, Orange teamed up with Barclaycard to offer a new NFC service called QuickTap. Not too long after, in June of 2011, Vodafone, O2, and Everything Everywhere announced plans to develop a mobile payments service that would be compatible across all of their networks regardless of the device a customer is using. The venture was supposed to serve as a one-stop-shop for businesses, advertisers and banks that want to enter the mobile payments arena. However, there's no telling what will happen to those plans now that Everything Everywhere is teaming up with MasterCard.
Everything Everywhere made headlines last week when the UK's telecoms watchdog Ofcom gave the company the go-ahead to re-purpose some of its existing spectrum for 4G LTE coverage. This means Everything Everywhere can launch a 4G LTE network before its competitors, which are stuck waiting for Ofcom's spectrum auction at the end of this year.
