Today, Visa (San Francisco) announced a new mobile financial
services application designed for Mountain View, Calif.-based
Google's Android mobile device platform. The partnership was
unveiled at the Visa Innovation Briefing in New York and involves
JPMorgan Chase (New York) and device manufacturer Nokia (Espoo,
Finland) as well.
Visa plans to make mobile payment services available in the U.S.
for consumers by the end of 2008 initially for Chase Visa
cardholders. The strategy is centered around three offerings: 1.
Mobile alerts that will give consumers near real-time information
on their card transactions, something many in the industry have
felt will help beat fraud. Users can customize their own
parameters. 2. Consumers will be able to obtain customized offers
from an array of merchants via their mobile phones—from
discounts to loyalty offers. 3. People will be able to use Google's
built-in location-based technology to quickly map nearby merchants
where they can redeem Visa offers and locate ATMs that accept Visa
cards.
After the introductory period, Visa plans to work with
additional card issuing financial institutions to extend the
availability of the services beyond Chase customers. Visa is also
developing a payment application to enable Visa accountholders to
make payments in retail locations or on-the-go over wireless
networks.
The announcement is part of a broader move by Visa to ramp up
its payments offerings to all its customers to provide, "better
money," according to Tim Attinger, head of product innovation and
development for Visa. The company will still stand by its
commitment to its PayWave product by promoting contactless payments
via mobile phone. As part of this plan, Nokia is building
near-field communication (NFC) chipsets into its 6212 classic
handsets to allow users to "wave and pay" at the point of sale.
Today's announcements represent the next phase in an ongoing effort
that began with a NFC pilot in 2005 between the two companies to
make mobile payments a commercially viable solution.
The new trio of services consisting of the alerts, offers and
mapping would be offered to consumers on an "opt-in" basis so they
would only activate those services they desire. They can also "opt
out" at any time, according to Visa. The idea behind the initiative
is to provide all of Visa's customers—financial institutions,
merchants and consumers—more valuable services and
convenience, said Attinger during the showcase. "We want to go
after cash and checks to give consumers more ways to pay," he said.
"The Visa network automates the delivery of the benefit. This
unlocks the ability for us to use our information
capabilities."
According to Tim Armstrong, president for the Americas, Google,
the mapping feature will be a key part of the Android offering.
"When you mix this with financial information that's relevant to
where you are, this is going to save consumers time and energy,"
Armstrong told the audience.