UK carrier Everything Everywhere, the joint venture between T-Mobile and Orange, has announced a 5 year deal with MasterCard that will bring NFC payments to customers at over 100,000 retail outlets in the UK. The move will also bring person to person (p2p) payments to Everything Everywhere, a feature that will roll out at a later date.
The move has angered competitors O2 and Vodafone, who are still likely teeming from last week’s Ofcom approval of Everything Everywhere’s 4G plans. O2 and Vodafone are working on “Project Oscar,” a unified mobile payments system that would have resulted in a unified, nationwide system in the UK. Since bad news always comes in threes (reference to UK mobile carrier 3 not intended), we’ll keep our eyes glued to the UK for Everything Everywhere’s inevitable next announcement.
[via Engadget, The Telegraph]