“At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Visa announced a new over-the-air provisioning service for smartphones for use with Visa’s payWave mobile payments system. The service will make it easier for operators, banks and even transit operators to link Visa payment accounts to consumers’ smartphones, the company says.
Although perhaps not as exciting as news of a mobile wallet “app” in consumers’ eyes, what Visa is revealing is a key part to the underlying infrastructure that can make NFC-based mobile payments a reality.
By allowing phone to be “switched on” for mobile payments through an over-the-air activation process, the process will become more seamless for users and service providers alike. However, because the system is NFC-based, it’s limited only to supported handset which include an NFC chip. This is nowhere near the majority of smartphones today, and does not include the Apple iPhone. In addition, while there appears to be growing consumer demand for mobile payments, it’s not clear whether consumers will take to NFC in large numbers. (Only analysts’ predictions on that front.)
The new provisioning system was developed in hand with Oberthur Technologies, and allows for Visa’s payWave mobile payments technology as well as other payment applications to be deployed over the air to consumers’ NFC-equipped phones. NFC, or near field communication, is the short-range wireless communications technology that forms the backbone of several mobile payments initiatives, including the carrier-led Isis, as well as Google Wallet….”
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