The credit card giant intends to go mainstream with its service throughout this year.
Visa has unveiled its intentions to expand the use and availability of its mobile payments services to the point that they will become mainstream within 2013.
Its announcement claimed that the expansion of the systems is an “immediate priority” for the company.
The mobile payments that it has to offer are already working to help to bring the United Kingdom to the top spot in Europe. At the moment, Poland is in the lead in terms of the largest marketplace for transactions using a smartphone or tablet within the European Union.
Visa UK and Ireland have both made announcements regarding this mobile payments mainstream launch.
These were made by way of Marc O’Brien, the managing director of Visa UK and Ireland. He stated that the credit card company was making a series of different efforts that would lead to a mainstream launch of the mobile payments services.
O’Brien also went on to say that his company was currently working alongside the leading manufacturers of Android based devices, in addition to Vodafone and Telefonica. These partnerships are designed to help to established higher security standard levels through the NFC technology based transactions.
In 2012, the Olympic Games in London were used as a trial period for various types of mobile payments. Many of the participants were given smartphones that were enabled with NFC technology in order to boost the awareness related to mobile payments, and encourage its use. O’Brien explained that “Building momentum from the Olympic Games, we’re looking to roll out of the [contactless payment] cards and handsets this year.”
He went on to add that “We’re also working on a digital wallet for cloud-based e-commerce and that’s coming here too this year.” Data from Visa has shown that only 17 percent of the smartphones owned in the United Kingdom are equipped with the NFC technology required for the Visa mobile payments system. However, the company believes that by 2017, that figure will have climbed considerably, to reach 70 percent. It is hoped by the company that this will help to overcome some of the considerable hurdles that it has faced in its trials so far.
