Telcos' Mobile Wallet Venture Blankets Sweden

Nearly all smartphone users in Sweden will soon have access to a mobile payment service called MyWallet if their phones support it.

The four largest mobile network operators in Sweden – Telia AB, Tele2 AB, Telenor Group and Hutchison 3G UK Ltd., known as Three – announced a joint venture last week to promote a Near Field Communication mobile wallet that they say will cover 97% of mobile subscribers in Sweden.

The telcos intend to test MyWallet at brick-and-mortar point-of-sale terminals accepting NFC later in July in the town of Visby, while anticipating a commercial launch of POS mobile payments in 2013, according to a press release.

MyWallet will also allow consumers to complete person-to-person fund transfers to customers of any of the four telcos. They will also be able to make payments as a text messages for services such as public transportation. MyWallet also supports mobile commerce payments and reloads of prepaid card accounts.

MyWallet is designed to operate on Google Inc. Android and Apple Inc. iOS mobile devices. The companies plan to add operation on Windows phone devices soon.

Google’s Nexus S phones include NFC chips, as do the Samsung Galaxy S phones and Nokia 800 models commonly carried by the telcos. The Apple iPhones currently do not contain NFC chips, but some payments industry analysts anticipate seeing the chips included in the next generation of iPhone to be released this fall.

Swedish mobile financial company Accumulate AB provides its Mobile Everywhere technology and security for the MyWallet mobile payment project, the companies stated.

The Swedish telcos established a joint venture company called 4T to manage and operate MyWallet. The initiative puts the Swedish telcos amongst other major mobile phone companies that have created joint ventures to establish mobile wallets in other countries.

The Isis project in the U.S. will be tested this summer in Salt Lake City, Utah and Austin, Texas.  The Mpass project in Germany was announced last summer, but is not yet in widespread commercial launch.

Yet another telco initiative, called Project Oscar in the U.K., awaits regulatory rulings on whether it represents a monopoly. That charge was first brought to European Union’s attention by Three, which balked at being part of the project.