Many analysts publish articles wondering why consumers have yet to widely adopt mobile payments. Thanks to an agreement between Visa and Samsung (News - Alert), the tide may be changing.
Financial institutions can now use the Mobile Provisioning Service from Visa to download payment information from customers who have NFC-enabled Samsung devices. Specially chosen Samsung NFC devices will also feature Visa’s mobile payment applet, payWave.
Samsung’s Key Management System creates secure data domains for payment information issuers. Banks will be able to load payment information over the air into a chip embedded in Samsung’s NFC devices.
Thanks to the Visa payWave applet, customers can upload their Visa payment account information to any financial institution’s mobile payment application.
All in all, the partnership is designed to accelerate the global adoption of mobile payments technology.
So far, consumers have been tepid about giving up plastic and cash for mobile payment options. “Ultimately, any new experience will succeed only if it is solved by working together for the common customer, and the experience is 10 times better than the current one. And that's a tall order,” Money 2020 cofounder, Aditya Khurjekar, told CNET.
Ovum (News - Alert) consumer analyst Eden Zoller agrees; “For most consumers, mobile payments – let alone NFC – is simply not on their radar. This is backed up by Ovum’s latest Consumer Insights survey.
“When consumers were asked to rank their most frequently [used] applications, mobile commerce-related applications were very low down on their list compared to mobile games, e-mail and social networking.”
Zoller thinks that the Visa-Samsung alliance will give NFC the boost that it needs. “Visa is a trusted payment brand, while Samsung is the top smartphone manufacturer in terms of shipments and a driving force behind the increasingly popular Android (News - Alert) device platform.”
“Both Samsung and Visa are committed to NFC and we would expect them to put effort and marketing muscle behind making consumers aware of the potential benefits that NFC payments can bring,” Zoller said.
Visa will demonstrate payWave and its Mobile Provisioning Service at Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) in Barcelona.
Edited by Braden Becker
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