Alfa-Bank Ukraine and mobile operator Kyivstar are to pilot Ukraine's first mobile contactless payment service, with technology from Gemalto. When the service is launched, customers will be able to use their NFC-enabled phones at the country's 22,000 contactless payment terminals.

Alfa-Bank is part of the Alfa Group Consortium, one of Russia's largest privately owned financial-industrial conglomerates.

Kyivstar, the Ukrainian business unit of Dutch mobile operator VimpelCom, has a customer base of more than 25 million subscribers.

The digital security company Gemalto will provide its UpTeq Multi-tenant SIM embedded software and product to Kyivstar for the NFC service.

"Kyivstar is committed to delivering an outstanding mobile payment experience," Alexey Kireev, head of Kyivstar's new business department, said in a news release. "Our goal is to continue developing mobile finance products at Kyivstar extensively in 2014."

Learn more about contactless/NFC.