Deutsche Telekom intends to make its move into the payments market at the physical point of sale in direct competition with banks, with an NFC payments commercial launch planned in Poland this year, before later expanding to Germany and other European countries.
The big Germany-based mobile operator group, as expected, announced its partnership with MasterCard Worldwide today, a deal that will see it use NFC phones, among other technologies, to enable consumers to pay with their phones where MasterCard PayPass is accepted.
The Deutsche Telekom payment service would be among other applications in mobile wallets the telco plans to introduce in its various European markets, starting with Poland. The operator said it also plans to sell point-of-sale terminals with partners–helping to address the problem of low penetration of POS terminals that can accept contactless payments in many of its markets.
