Some time ago, Nokia and Visa announced a global system that would turn mobile phones into wallets that after many years of trials would enable contract-free payments, remote-payments and several other types of payment.

Thus, Nokia was the first mobile phone manufacturer to consider turning a handset into a wallet, and is now aiming to provide some services that will make that kind of device useful.

Instead of doing so themselves, Nokia formed a joint venture with Giesecke & Devrient, a German company that makes smart cards.

The venture, Venyon, aims to develop mobile phone payments based on the NFC (near-field communication) technology that uses a RFID chip and antenna to exchange information with a payment station if in a range of a few centimeters.

Users will be able to pay by simply tapping the phone against a vending maching, checkout stand or any payment device. The benefit of this has been mentioned time and time again, and since the mobile phone is something most people never leave at home, they wouldn't have to worry about some extra object (in this case credit card) that they have to carry around or that they might forget at home.

Like most technologies involving 3G mobile data, the NFC was also first thought of in Japan and now, major companies like Sony, Microsoft, HP, Visa or MasterCard are backing the technology through the NFC Forum.

For the moment, there are few phones outside Japan and South Korea that are equipped to use the technology. Venyon is mainly focusing on the need for an infrastructure through which retailers and financial service companies can work with carriers and handset makers.