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visa posts

Visa rolls out its first commercial NFC payment system

by Donald Melanson posted Apr 9th 2009 @ 2:17PM

Nokia fulfilled its part of the bargain by rolling out its NFC-enabled 6212 cellphone last year, and it looks like Visa is now finally making the phone a good deal more useful -- in Malaysia, at least. That's where the company has launched its first commercial NFC (or Near Field Communications) payment service for point-of-sale transactions, which will let folks simply wave the phone in front of a reader to make a purchase instead of going to the hassle of swiping a card. What's more, it doesn't look like this is simply a limited trial, with 1,800 stores in the country ready to accept the magical payments out of the gate, and Maxis and Maybank on board to let folks easily access their credit account. Better still, Visa has also said that this move finally signals the shift from pilot programs to actual roll-outs, although it's unfortunately not being all that specific about the next few markets on tap just yet.

Rogers holds hands with RBC / Visa for mobile phone payment pilot

by Darren Murph posted Oct 30th 2008 @ 11:43PM

If you're tired of paying for random snacks and such the old fashioned way (you know, swiping your credit card and handing over your John Henry), Rogers Wireless feels your pain. While not the first mobile payment initiative to hit the Great North, this one has some pretty notable backers. Starting in mid-2009, Rogers, RBC and Visa will join together to allow customers "to pay for small purchases" so long as they're holding one of the "specially-equipped mobile phones that can be waved at Visa payWave-enabled checkout readers at select retail stores and quick-service restaurants in Toronto's downtown core." The pilot will utilize Motorola handsets outfitted with Near Field Communication (NFC) contactless chips, while Gemalto will be managing the transfer of credit card information from RBC to the secure SIM card. There's no word on plans beyond the trial, but here's hoping it does something more than just fizzle out.

[Via mobilesyrup]

Symbian Foundation grabs a dozen more members, ARM / Huawei included

by Darren Murph posted Oct 26th 2008 @ 8:19PM

Just like your extended family, the Symbian Foundation just keeps growing. And growing. And growing. Merely a month and change after coaxing the likes of Sharp, Opera Software, South Korea's KTF, and UIQ to join the perpetually raging party, along comes word that a dozen more have confessed their allegiance. During the first day of the 2008 Symbian Smartphone Show, we were told that over fifty companies were now in support of the Foundation, including twelve newcomers; in ~~no particular~~ alphabetical order, they are ARM, CIeNET, Flander, FUJISOFT, Huawei, Inmote, InnoPath Software, Red Bend, Scalado, Symsource, TRANGO Virtual Processors and Visa. The outfits are all planning to band together in order to create "the world's most open platform for mobile devices" when operations begin in 1H 2009, but until then, everyone's just taking an extended vacation and heading to Fiji to "brainstorm."

[Via Mobileburn]

Visa gunning for your phone, announces Nokia and Android plans

by Chris Ziegler posted Sep 26th 2008 @ 5:00AM

Neither mobile banking apps nor mobile payment technologies are anything new, but the depth of Visa's newfound commitment to anything and everything mobile here is pretty unique. The company has announced a slew of initiatives to make it as frighteningly easy as possible for cardholders to do cool things with their accounts right from their phones starting with the launch of the Nokia 6212 Classic next month, which will serve up NFC-based contactless payments, cardholder-to-cardholder transfers, and realtime account alerts (subject to issuing bank availability). Meanwhile, they've wasted no time jumping on the Android bandwagon, revealing that they've hooked up with Chase to offer an Android app that delivers notifications, merchant "offers," and a location-based search of nearby retailers that accept Visa cards (which is pretty much all of them in our experience). If the Chase trial pans out, Visa plans to shop the Android app around to other issuing banks. Finally, there's also a new web-based mobile money transfer pilot going down that's scheduled to kick off around the end of the year involving several banks and "as many as" 6,000 cardholders; what are the odds that those 6,000 are going to be transferring much money among each other, though?

[Via CNET]

Read - Nokia partnership
Read - Android plans
Read - Mobile money transfer

"Wave-and-pay" system headed to Canada

by Darren Murph posted Nov 7th 2007 @ 9:03PM

Oh, Canada! If all goes to plan, you Canucks up north will soon be able to take advantage of technology that is already in use in many corners of the globe. Reportedly, the Royal Bank of Canada and Visa Canada will be teaming up to launch a pilot program that enables users to purchase goods by just waving their cellphone in front of a reader. The handsets will sport an embedded microchip to pass along payment information, and similar to PayPass setups, it'll require no pin / password / signature for transactions under $25. Anne Koski, head of payment innovations at Royal Bank's cards division, noted that it was still too early to say which mobiles would eventually feature the built-in technology, but hopefully we'll be finding out sooner rather than (even) later.

[Image courtesy of USATech]

Visa and Nokia team up for mobile payments

by Paul Miller posted Apr 28th 2006 @ 11:38AM

It's not as foreign of a concept now that PayPal is offering mobile payments in the good ol' US of A and RFID credit cards abound, but Visa and Nokia are getting their own little project off the ground in Malaysia for credit card payments from a mobile phone. The "Mobile Visa Wave Payment Pilot" is based on the simple idea of smart card payments, but embeds the radio inside a Nokia phone instead of a credit card. During the trial, 200 Visa Wave cardholders will get to spend their monies with the wave of a special Nokia 3230 phone, with 2500 retail outlets accepting such payments. Visa of course claims a great deal of security for the project, but we're still leaving that blink card at home for now.