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Bloomberg reports that mobile carrier Deutsche Telekom AG is talking to Google Inc., credit card companies and banks as it looks for more partners to join its new mobile payment system. This according to an interview with DT's head of innovation, Thomas Kiessling.
Deutsche Telekom and Mastercard just announced their partnership on an NFC program starting this year in Germany and Poland, which they expect to roll out through all of Europe. Deutsche Telekom currently has more than 93 million subscribers in Europe.
"We’re talking to other players in the market, and even a cooperation with Google is theoretically possible," Kiessling said in the article.
Kiessling said partnering with other payment providers may attract customers. He said cooperation between other carriers on standards for mobile wallet technology only makes sense once consumers begin to adopt the technology.
"In many areas you shouldn’t wait for standardization, because that’s how the telcos missed a series of innovations over the past 10 years," Kiessling told Bloomberg, "We tried to standardize advanced messaging globally and in the end other industries were faster."
A Google spokesman declined to comment for the article.
For more stories on this topic, visit the Contactless/NFC research center.
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