The city of Strasbourg will be the second in France to offer a commercial NFC service from 17 October, following the launch of the Cityzi service in Nice last year. NFC handsets will be on sale from operators Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom as well as branches of banking group Crédit Mutuel CIC, the majority owner of leading MVNO NRJ Mobile. Services available to Cityzi users will include banking from BNP Paribas, Crédit Mutuel and CIC. And for the first time in France, users will able to pay at parking meters using their NFC phones.

Orange launched NFC serviced in Nice in May 2010. Speaking at the GSMA Mobile Money Summit in June, Thierry Barba, the operator’s director of ecosystem development, said further cities were planned for rollout during the year. And the French government awarded funding for NFC deployments to nine cities, including Strasbourg, earlier this year. The city has already conducted an NFC trial.  Orange has said it plans to equip at least 500,000 of its customers in France with NFC-compatible handsets by end-2011. Jointly, the country’s operators have committed to deploying one million NFC handsets this year.