Four Asian telcos, Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom, Hong Kong's HKT, Japan's KDDI and South Korea's SK Planet announced the formation of the Asia NFC Alliance at the Mobile World Congress 2014. The Alliance, which is support by the GSMA, aims to extend existing NFC services beyond national borders.

"Our near-term goal is to promote common standards and a technology development platform for new applications," Lin Kuo-Feng, the Asia NFC Alliance's chairman, said in a statement. "We will begin with our members' domestic markets, but in the long term we hope to expand the NFC Alliance into a global organization creating convenient services worldwide."

Mobile NFC services are already available in several countries providing travel information, hotel and ticket booking, coupon download and mobile payment. However their reach is limited to mobile operators' home markets. The Asia NFC Alliance aims to expand NFC service coverage to the Asian region across industries such as transportation, retail, finance and tourism.

The Asia NFC Alliance's three-stage development goal consists of developing international NFC standards, creating an information platform for NFC development and attracting further industry members.

"We aim to actively promote collaboration with telecommunications carriers, not only in Asia, but in Europe and America, creating a world in which users in all countries can avail themselves of NFC services," Takashi Tanaka, KDDI's president, said in a statement.