Visa and Samsung yesterday announced a global alliance that they said has the potential to significantly accelerate the availability of mobile payments globally.
According to the agreement, financial institutions that are planning to launch mobile payment programs will be able to use the Visa Mobile Provisioning Service to securely download payment account information to NFC-enabled Samsung devices.
In addition, Samsung has agreed to load the Visa payWave applet onto its mobile devices featuring NFC technology. Visa payWave is Visa’s mobile payment applet that enables consumers to make “wave and pay” contactless payments using mobile devices.
“Samsung devices enabled with Visa payment functionality will no doubt be a powerful product offering – especially in markets where paying with a mobile device is becoming commonplace,” said Jim McCarthy, Global Head of Product, Visa Inc. “However, the key to making mobile payments broadly available all over the world is to offer financial institutions a secure way to provision millions of smartphones with payment account information – and that is exactly what Visa and Samsung are ready to deliver.”
Dr. Won-Pyo Hong, President and Head of Media Solution Center, Samsung Electronics, added: “Samsung has been a pioneer in NFC devices and is again leading the way in enabling NFC-based mobile payments. The partnership with Visa represents a step towards a global mobile payment platform. We believe that we have a strong value proposition for financial institutions that will ultimately allow consumer choice in NFC payments.”
NFC technology is the global communication standard that enables mobile devices to securely communicate with a payment terminal. ABI Research forecasts that a total of 1.95 billion NFC-enabled devices will ship in 2017.
The Visa Samsung global alliance is a first of its kind between a leading NFC handset manufacturer and payment network that is paving the way for the implementation of large scale mobile payment programmes.
The announcement was made at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where Visa are demonstrating Visa payWave for mobile and its Mobile Provisioning Service that can be used by financial institutions to securely load payment account information to NFC-enabled Samsung mobile devices.
