Project Oscar, the UK joint venture between Vodafone, O2 and Everything Everywhere, has renamed itself as Weve. The rebranded platform is also putting more emphasis on marketing and advertising ahead of mobile payments as the initial focus of its business.

Following media reports last week, it was confirmed that the venture’s new name is Weve. See its website here which talks about Weve as being the focal points for a range of services “from mobile marketing and advertising to payments and transactions, loyalty programs and coupons”.

However the website makes no mention of NFC. Of course the venture could use another technology for payments but has previously talked about using NFC. In a comment to NFC World, the new venture confirmed that mobile advertising will be its immediate focus, ahead of payments. Advertising will cover video, messaging and display, it said.

Even in its previous guise as Project Oscar, the venture had put advertising at the fore. Project Oscar received the go ahead from the European Commission about one month ago.

Weve says it has about 40 staff at present, both full-time and contractors. Details about its senior management team will be released over the next few weeks, it says. Of the UK’s mobile operators, only Three is not involved in the venture.