Consortium members include Citibank, DBS Bank; mobile operators M1, SingTel and StarHub; payment service provider EZ-Link and Gemalto will provide its Trusted Services Manager.

In this collaboration, Gemalto will develop and operate the TTP infrastructure. DBS, EZ-Link and Citibank will offer a range of their credit and debit cards to be issued over-the-air through Gemalto and stored on the secure chips in their customers’ NFC-enabled mobile phones for contactless payments. The services will be launched progressively across all three mobile operators - M1, SingTel and StarHub - starting next year.

According to IDA, NFC payments will be available at more than 20,000 retail points already accepting MasterCard and Visa contactless cards, as well as Singapore’s CEPAS payments standard. Businesses can also use NFC-enabled digital signs located at more than 600 locations in major shopping malls and office buildings throughout Singapore.

IDA and the seven companies are investing a total of $31.5 million (US) through the Call-for-Collaboration (CFC) to deploy the TTP infrastructure and more than ten NFC mobile payment and value-added services by 2014. The services will be rolled out progressively, with at least three NFC mobile payment services available from mid-2012, says IDA.

In addition to the consortium, IDA is encouraging other payment and value-added service providers to use the infrastructure to deploy their own NFC mobile services, thereby creating a true NFC ecosystem.

The deployment will initially be focused on retail payment, with transit set to follow in early 2013.