Wireless operator Orange has teamed up with Visa to roll out a mobile contactless payments service across France.
Under the deal, Visa technology will be preloaded onto all Orange NFC SIM cards - the operator began rolling out NFC-enabled SIMs to its 27 million customers across France last year.
Customers will then be able to download an Orange Cash app and load a pre-paid account. From this, users will be able to make payments of under EUR20 by tapping their handsets against Visa payWave readers. For payments of over EUR20, they will be asked for a secret code they will have chosen.
Payments specialist Wirecard has been enlisted to provide the technical platform needed to manage the mobile payment application and one of the firm's units will act as the card issuing institution.
Orange Cash will be introduced in Strasbourg and Caen in early 2014, ahead of a nationwide roll-out in the second quarter of the year.
Thierry Millet, VP, m-payments and NFC, Orange, says: "By launching Orange Cash, we want to accelerate the adoption of mobile payment generally and, of course, among our customers via a simple and secured solution, which offers many advantages."