Payments NZ has completed drafting a series of standards intended to steer the rollout of Near Field Communication-enabled contactless mobile payments applications. The final version of standards and principles should be ready for general release in March 2014.Jane Retimana, head of strategy and programs for Payments NZ, which is the standards body the New Zealand payments system, said yesterday that only Payments NZ members would be obliged to use the standards, although other bodies would be encouraged to follow suit.The standards cover how mobile payments applications should be delivered to a New Zealand consumer's smartphone, how payments apps should be used, and how they should be managed and updated.They are not technical standards, and are technology agnostic, but will, for example, set out what should be achieved with a single tap of the device, and what a double tap will represent. For consumers it should reduce confusion about how to use mobile payment applications as most apps will follow a similar pattern. Speaking at Cebit's Future of Payments conference in Sydney yesterday Retimana outlined the potential demand for NFC-enabled mobile payments based on Kiwis' appetite for contactless card based transactions. She said that there were now more than 250,000 contactless cards in operation in New Zealand which in August were used to make 1.1 million contactless transactions worth NZ$45.2 million.Besides the planned release of the mobile payment standards Retimana said that Payments NZ also planned to develop a 10-year vision for New Zealand payments during 2014.