Rival telcos have joined forces to launch the country's first mobile wallet.

That's using a phone for transactions like buying a coffee to much more expensive items, using bank debit and credit card facilities.

Paymark, 2degrees, Vodafone and Spark have formed an independent company Semble.

They have teamed up with ASB and BNZ to launch the service.

Semble chief executive Rob Low says the first for New Zealand is the collaboration between all three mobile network operators.

"In most of the countries around the world, there are maybe one or two companies working together to bring a mobile wallet for that market that is quite restricted so we have something today that is quite unique around the world."