LIVE FROM THE GSMA’S NFC & MOBILE MONEY SUMMIT, NEW YORK: Mobile operator Orange talked up growth in both its European NFC deployments as well as its Orange Money service targeting users in the Middle East and Africa.

With NFC services already launched in France, Poland, Spain and the UK, Thierry Millet (pictured), VP of Payments and Contactless at the company, outlined how Orange is now partnering with around 20 banks in Europe and has the support of one million point-of-sale terminals across the continent. 132,000 of those – according to Visa – are live in Poland, 280,000 are live in the UK, while 157,000 support its French NFC deployment and 255,000 are live in Spain.

Meanwhile the Orange Money initiative (which does not use NFC) has been deployed across numerous countries in the Middle East and Africa. Millet highlighted recent progress with its Orange Money International Transfer service that enables mobile subscribers in Mali, Senegal and the Ivory Coast to send funds to one another. “Yesterday we achieved the same number of transactions in one day as we did for the entire month of August,” trumpeted Millet.

Millet was also keen to promote the company’s new Orange Money Visa Card in Botswana, dubbed ‘the first card for the unbanked.’

Expect more news from Orange in the next few days; Millet promised a press release featuring updates on its mobile money deployments.