EnStream, a Canadian mobile-commerce joint venture that was formed between Bell, Rogers and Telus, recently sold its Zoompass mobile money service to Paymobile, NFC World reports. Officials from the joint venture suggested that there was no need for EnStream to operate its own mobile payment processing service.

Zoompass was first launched in 2009 as a mobile stored-value payment service accompanied by a contactless payment card linked to the same user account, Finextra reports. The service was available for download through the app stores run b y Apple iTunes, Google and BlackBerry. Users could transfer money to other users, withdraw money at ATMs and process transactions online and at participating retail locations. However, EnStream recently announced that Zoompass had outlived its usefulness, prompting the sale to pre-paid and virtual card management company Paymobile.

"As the mobile commerce ecosystem has evolved, EnStream's focus has shifted to enabling established credential issuers and carriers to leverage the potential of NFC (near field communication) in mobile handsets," EnStream CEO Almis Ledas told the news source. "The operation of a payment service is no longer required for us to fulfill our mandate."

Part of the reason for the decision to sell the service is that Rogers, Bell and Telus have all undergone recent efforts to negotiate their own agreements with various Canadian banks and operate their own NFC-based mobile payment processing services. The most recent example of this is when Rogers applied for its own banking license in 2011 and entered into a deal with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce to release its own 'suretap' service on Blackberry phones, the news source reports.

Meanwhile, Paymobile plans to repackage Zoompass as a white-label mobile commerce app geared toward businesses instead of consumers.