Semble is a joint collaboration between major banks and all three operators in New Zealand serving as the aggregator for banks and service providers. Gemalto's Allynis TSH will deliver the secure over-the-air provisioning of payment credentials to the user's NFC device.

New Zealanders have made over 20 million contactless transactions worth an estimated NZD 735 million in 2014, and, an estimated one million NFC-enabled smartphones will be used in New Zealand by year's end1. This solution, launched as a common national platform, will enable anyone to access the NFC services from any network in New Zealand, empowering 100% of the subscribers to enjoy quick, secure, and convenient NFC services.

Users will be able to use their phones to pay for goods and services at more than 16,000 contactless NFC terminals in retail outlets such as departmental stores, restaurants, and movie theatres. In the future, they will also be able to enjoy other services such as transport, loyalty points, gift vouchers, coupons, and access, with a tap of their phone. The TSH service will be hosted and operated in Gemalto's certified data center certified by the major international payments schemes, providing state-of-the-art standards of security.

"New Zealanders are increasingly relying on smartphones to manage their lives," said Rob Ellis, CEO of Semble. "Gemalto enables us to confidently deploy new applications in a secure way. With over 1.5 billion mobile users worldwide covered by its TSMs and a strong record of NFC deployments, it provides a competitive edge to our service providers in launching mobile payment services across a comprehensive range of phones and networks."

"Smartphone penetration has almost doubled in the last two years in New Zealand, setting the ground for NFC service adoption," said Michael Au, President South Asia and Japan at Gemalto. "Gemalto's TSH solution provides a single connection to all service providers, eliminating the need for multiple individual TSHs. This will enable Semble to attract more service providers to come onboard, and distribute new mobile services in ways never seen before."