Visa all ready for m-payment immigration

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Visa Inc. has recently announced that it has partnered with several leading financial institutions around the world to offer new mobile payment services.

BBVA and Cuscal launched new issuer-branded mobile payment applications for mobile devices running on the Android operating system. Additionally Banco do Brazil, PNC Bank, N.A., and U.S. Bank intend to launch similar capabilities in the near future.

To use these new mobile payment services, consumers simply download their financial institution’s mobile payment app from the Google Play store, the announcement explains. Following a one-time enrollment process, customers of participating financial institutions who download and install the application will be able to pay in-store with their Visa accounts by waving their Android mobile phone in front of a contactless reader.

These capabilities are an integral part of Visa Digital Solutions, the company adds which is a comprehensive suite of offerings that facilitate secure payments across a broad range of Internet-connected devices and wearables.

“2015 is the year in which fast and safe mobile payments based on Visa technology will proliferate across the world,” said Sam Shrauger, senior vice president of digital solutions at Visa Inc. “We are very proud that Visa’s Digital Solution is now accessible to the broader market to be used across multiple devices and form factors – enabling secure, fast and engaging commerce experiences in any environment.”

In fact, a year ago at Mobile World Congress 2014, Visa launched new technology that provides financial institutions, merchants and developers the ability to securely deploy mobile payment apps with Android devices. Specifically, Visa is offering capabilities that give financial institutions the option to take advantage of Host Card Emulation (HCE), a new feature in the Android mobile operating system that allows any NFC application on an Android device to emulate a smart card.

The company is confident of the flexibility of Visa’s Digital Solutions, which includes Visa’s software development kit (SDK) and the Visa Token Service, an innovative technology as it calls it, that replaces sensitive payment account information found on plastic cards, such as the 16-digit personal account number, expiration date and security code, with a unique series of numbers that can be used for payment without exposing the underlying account details.

Visa Token Service is the foundation for Visa mobile payments through Apple Pay, HCE and other digital payments apps and use cases coming to the market.

“Host Card Emulation has opened up the Android payments ecosystem to innovation, democratizing access to NFC and paving the way for more rapid uptake of mobile commerce services,” according to Jordan McKee, senior analyst at 451 Research. “Inevitably, the technology will play a marquee role in driving the proliferation of in-store mobile payments, an opportunity that we project will reach $570.1 billion globally by 2018.”