Spain's Telefonica plans to test NFC payment services using its employees before rolling a service out to its users.
The company has provided an initial 1,000 employees with NFC-enabled phones, and said it planned to expand this to up to 12,500 employees across multiple countries as the trial develops.
Partners in the trial include Autogrill, Bankinter, BBVA, La Caixa and Visa, with Samsung supplying the phones.
Telefonica said it had recently completed a preparatory NFC project in Sitges, Barcelona, which it claims was the largest live NFC pilot yet conducted in Europe.
The experiments are leading up to a full-scale deployment in Spain, and the company hinted it will also look to introduce NFC in other countries where it operates.
Samsung has separately announced a tie-up with Visa to provide NFC mobile payment services for the London 2012 Summer Olympics.
The companies plan to enable contactless mobile payments at more than 60,000 merchant locations around London during the event, NFC news reported.
The companies plan to use the Olympics as a starting point for developing mobile payment services in the UK and elsewhere.