With mobile payment, loyalty and commerce capabilities on its must-have mind, electronic payment leader Tsys announced today that it has partnered up with Cassis International, a technology company that offers near-field communication (NFC) service management. The goal of the friendship is to jump in on the vision of many: offer consumers phones with NFC technology, so they may be used to make payments and receive marketing messages.

“Consumers will soon be using their phones as their wallets, so delivering secure mobile payments, loyalty, rewards and coupons will be a ‘must have’ for our bank and merchant customers,” said Troy Woods, president and chief operating officer at Tsys, in a statement.

This is no small matter, considering the size of Tsys.  According to Tyse’s earnings statement, the company had conducted 1.3 billion point-of-sale transactions in the third quarter of 2010.

This news comes on top of a Wall Street Journal article published today that decrees mobile wallets are nearing takeoff, at least in Europe (and already in Japan). A central problem surrounding mobile wallets’ ubiquity in all nations is each players’ greed: banks, phone providers, retailers, among others, all want a large slice of that profit pie.