Orange takes m-wallet to Poland

Mobile operator Orange has expanded its mobile wallet offering to another market with a commercial offer targeting several thousand users in Poland.

PTK Centertel, an Orange group affiliate, is deploying the largest NFC program in Poland, in collaboration with technology partner Gemalto. The move follows recent deployments in the UK and France.

Poland already benefits from a well established contactless payment infrastructure of approximately 35,000 acceptance points, notably in fast food restaurants, cinemas, supermarkets and retailers, giving the technology a head start when deployed on handsets.

Gemalto provides the NFC software and user interface applications securely embedded on an NFC-enabled SIM, along with the Trusted Service Management (TSM) services.

One of the issues to address on a global scale however, remains the availability of NFC handsets. In the UK for example, the Orange QuickTap offering is only available, in the first instance, to customers who buy a special version of the Samsung Tocco handset. Orange said in a release that a wider range of compatible devices are “expected to follow” at some point in the future, a choice of words that suggests the firm isn’t certain when, or even if, they will come.