LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2014: Hot on the heels of its partnership deal with UK mobile payments venture Weve, MasterCard has now teamed up with Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica Deutschland and Vodafone to create a new mobile platform and accelerate the development of mobile payments in Germany.

Based on MasterCard’s Trevica platform, the collaboration means that banks have access to a number of mobile operators via one single point of integration.

“We want to enable banks to reach more of their customers with secure NFC,” said Stefano Parisse, group director consumer services with Vodafone. “By reducing the cost for banks to integrate and by reducing their time to market, we are confident that we have a model for Germany that will work around Europe.”

The companies said the model would be extended to other European countries throughout 2014.

Peter Vesco, senior vice president business unit payment with Deutsche Telekom, added: ‘We are continuously going forward on our way of making mobile payments become a usual payment method for everyone. This cooperation is a further step in that direction.”

Earlier in February MasterCard announced a partnership with Weve, the mobile payments joint venture of Vodafone UK, EE and O2 UK, to accelerate the development of the UK mobile payments platform.

David Sear, CEO of Weve, said at the time that mobile payments were “in a bit of a mess”. He warned that “we’ll be waiting for another 10 years for adoption of mobile payments at scale” unless the mobile payments industry recognises that it has to partner fully with banks and retailers.