Telecom New Zealand, Auckland Transport, and Westpac will trial a mobile wallet system from May, in collaboration with Gemalto, Thales, and Paymark. The trial will involve some thirty staff from the six organisations and trial participants will be able to use a phone to make "tap and go" payments to access public transport in Auckland and make purchases at a small selection of retailers. Thales will be using its near-field communication (NFC) application throughout Auckland Transport's final smart card ticketing system, HOP, before deploying it globally across all networks and banks. The trial will also use a Westpac credit card to top up a Telecom XT prepaid account, using Paymark's infrastructure. For the trial, Gemalto will provide the essential network infrastructure required for near-field communications including its Trusted Service Management platform (TSM). Earlier this month Telecom, Vodafone, 2degrees, and Paymark announced a joint venture to launch a TSM.
