Vodafone and Visa this week announced that they will launch the operator’s NFC-based mobile wallet supported by Visa’s payments system in Australia “as early as next year”, the latest detail to emerge in their global launch schedule for the new service.

As of next year, 80 percent of smartphones sold by Vodafone will have NFC, according to Thomas Roets, Vodafone Australia’s general manager of strategy and business development.

Roets did not specify whether the figure referred to Australia in particular or the operator’s target globally.

Users will pick up an NFC-enabled SIM from Vodafone then download an Android app to their smartphone and then register for a virtual Visa prepaid card, using the app. Having then added funds from an existing Visa or MasterCard card to the pre-paid card, they can access the service which is called SmartPass

However the operator will first launch its Smartpass service in Germany and Spain before the end of the first quarter of 2013 before rolling out elsewhere. In addition the operator has previously mentioned Netherlands, Turkey and the US as early launch markets.

It appears Australia might be in a second wave of launches, along with other markets such as Italy, which have talked about a generalised 2013 launch date. Interestingly, altough Vodafone Italy is using the SmartPass name (like Australia) it is otherwise the odd man out since it is working with MasterCard and not Visa, the result of a one-off approach in Italy.

Vodafone Australia will conduct trials ahead of its commercial launch next year.

The virtual Visa card on users’ smartphones in Australia is issued by ANZ, a financial institution. And payments are processed by prepaid specialist Rev.