Maybe competitors don't make good partners after all. Coming on the heels of reports that British wireless carriers won't have their proposed national NFC mobile payment scheme off the ground before the London Olympics, news from Belgium is that mobile providers there have halted to a similar partnership.

Datanews is reporting that Belgian wireless carriers Mobistar, Belgacom and Base, who announced that they were supposed to launch a digital wallet using SMS messaging and NFC sometime in 2011, have called off their plans. According to the post, sources have said fighting between the players has caused Mobistar to back out. Mobistar reportedly balked at the idea of basing the system on PingPing, Belgacom's micropayment platform.

The report says not everyone is convinced that the project is officially dead. Pamela Renders, a spokeswoman for Febelfin, the Belgian Financial Sector Federation, said only that the project will take longer than expected and that the original purpose of building a digital wallet for small payments, would be difficult to attain.

"The dialogue continues between the financial sector and mobile operators," Renders said. "But it is true that the initial target will be missed."

Belgacom released a similar statement saying only that the project was taking longer than expected.

Mobistar was less optimistic.

"Unfortunately, we were not able to find a 'business case' in which all parties could meet," Mobistar's spokeswoman Patti Verdoodt said. She said Mobistar remains a strong advocate of mobile payment methods, "but the fact is that in the short term, there is no common project."

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