Participants in a pilot run by Semble, a joint venture between New Zealand’s three operators and leading banks, have this month started making NFC-based payments for goods and services, using a secure hub supplied by French vendor Gemalto.

The participants are a mix of users from Semble’s shareholder and stakeholder organisations. They have downloaded the Semble app from Google Play, populated their wallets with live versions of their credit and debit cards from ABS and BNZ banks and then are free to make payments.

Gemalto also announced that it has supplied a hub for Semble to secure over-the-air provisioning of payment credentials to the user’s NFC device.

The vendor said that users will in the future be able to use their phones to pay for goods and services at more than 16,000 contactless NFC terminals in retail outlets such as departmental stores, restaurants, and movie theatres.

In addition, they will also be able to enjoy other services such as transport, loyalty points, gift vouchers, coupons, and access, with a tap of their phone.

The pilot is due to run until early 2015. Semble has previously said it will be launched to the wider public later in 2015.