British mobile group Vodafone will offer contactless payment services in Europe from the second quarter of 2015 through Vodafone Wallet.

New agreements to this effect were signed with Visa and Carta Worlwide.

The new service that allows Vodafone customers to add bank cards to their Vodafone Wallet and use smartphones to pay for goods and services at contactless terminals will require a Vodafone NFC SIM and will be supported on a wide range of Android smartphones.

It comes as part of Vodafone’s mcommerce strategy designed to provide a mobile alternative to coins, banknotes and plastic cards.

To avail this service, customers will have to input their bank cards to the Vodafone Wallet app and confirm ownership of the card using Verified by Visa authentication. They can pay by tapping their phones against a contactless point-of-sale terminal and check their mobile payment transaction history.

The service will automatically debit payments from the selected bank cards, which are protected with a user-defined 4-digit PIN for higher value payments.

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Carta’s partnership with Vodafone provided the latter with the payment card enabling technology.

Vodafone Group head of mCommerce Mark Ritzmann said: "With a few clicks, customers will be able to add payment cards to their Vodafone Wallet and use Android smartphones to pay at contactless terminals. Thanks to our agreements with Visa and Carta Worldwide, using bank cards stored on Vodafone Wallet is fast, secure and simple."

Visa Europe executive director Mobile Jeremy Nicholds said: "We are really excited to bring this new payment service together with Vodafone, which will enable Visa credit and debit cards to be used for mobile contactless payments.

"This initiative is part of Visa’s strategy to accelerate mobile payments and make it easier for banks to enable their cards to make payments on mobile phones and for consumers to pay in the most secure and convenient way."