Telefonica and RIM trial NFC payments for BB.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

Telefonica has developed a version of its proposed digital wallet to trial with NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphones. 

 The two companies will initially run a trial for 350 Telefonica employees at the operator's headquarters in Spain in collaboration with local banks and retailers. 

Those involved in the trial will be able to make payments by tapping their BlackBerry against a reader and Telefonica employees will also be able to use their smartphones instead of a pass card to enter the operator’s head office. 

The operator is moving towards wider scale NFC-based launches in 2012 according to an announcement of the trial. Matthew Key, chairman and CEO of Telefonica, said the operator will launch wallet services commercially in several markets next year.

The Telefonica wallet is supported by the following BlackBerry smartphones: the Bold 9900, Curve 9360 and 9380 all three of which run on the latest BlackBerry 7 OS.

 The trial is based on SIM-based NFC technology.  The application looks like a physical wallet illustrating the various cards available to the user. Once a card is selected then users have a range of options including making a payment or seeing an account balance.