MasterCard Agrees Everything Everywhere NFC Partnership

Everything Everywhere has announced a five-year partnership with MasterCard to develop mobile and digital payment products for its T-Mobile and Orange customers.

The operator, which is the largest in the UK in terms of subscribers, claimed the strategic partnership would accelerate the adoption of mobile payments and make it easier for its 27 million customers to pay for goods and services.

EE said both people and small businesses will benefit from its products, the first of which will allow its subscribers to pay for goods using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology at more than 100,000 retailers in the UK.

Everything Everywhere NFC

“Working with MasterCard is an important step in making mobile contactless payments more widely available for our 27 million customers,” said Gerry McQuade, chief marketing officer at Everything Everywhere. “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.”

Other initiatives being touted are person-to-person money transfers, loyalty rewards and other digital payment services as well as services that will allow small business customers to accept payments using mobile devices.

The two companies have been working together for the last few years on Orange QuickTap, the first commercially available NFC system in the UK, which was used in a mobile bus ticketing trial in Cambridgeshire earlier this year.

Last month, Deutsche Telekom, one of Everything Everywhere’s parent companies, agreed a deal with MasterCard to bring NFC mobile payment products to its 93 million customers in Europe, starting with Germany and Poland.

“We’re delighted to be working with Everything Everywhere, the UK’s leading mobile operator,” said Marion King, president of MasterCard UK and Ireland. “The partnership we are announcing today builds on our strong heritage in the mobile payments space and ensures that MasterCard remains the partner of choice for leading businesses in the UK.”

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