ValueCard and MeaWallet have agreed to a strategic partnership to deliver open and closed-loop mobile payment services to bank, retailers and MNOs in the Philippines, the companies announced Tuesday in a press release.

The Philippines, with a population of more than 100 million and one of the highest smartphone penetration growth rates in Asia, stand to implement the EMV standard by 2017, according to the announcement. The partnership program will specifically address this opportunity and has already been launched with the first bank and retail customers entering into the ValueCard Payment Ecosystem.

The MeaWallet cloud-based mobile payment platform will be used to enable payment services as well as other services like loyalty, coupons and more in a wallet made for the Philippine market, according to the announcement. The partnership provides existing and new customers of ValueCard the ability to add branded mobile wallets and cloud-based digital mobile payment cards to their portfolio of card products. The open-loop mobile cards will initially support MasterCard and Visa cloud-based mobile payment schemes. 

"This partnership means that our customers will have a faster route to mobile payments through a payment ecosystem supported by banks, retailers and MNOs, using new innovative products such as customer branded digital mobile payment cards and mobile wallets," Joseph Issifu, founder and COO of ValueCard, said in a statement. "We look forward to enabling many new and interesting mobile payment projects together with our customers in the Philippines."
 
The digital mobile payment cards are using tokenization with cloud-based security and Host Card Emulation technology, according to the announcement. The end users just tap their smartphone at the merchant NFC-enabled POS-terminal to complete the payment. The service will work at all merchants that accept MasterCard PayPass and Visa payWave transactions.