Telecom Lead @ Mobile World Congress 2013: Visa has signed an agreement with mobile commerce provider ROAM, an Ingenico company, to enable merchants to accept electronic payments using mobile technology.
The companies aim to displace cash payments by expanding the reach of electronic payments to new merchant categories, and by making it easier for merchants and acquirers to take advantage of secure mobile acceptance solutions.
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ROAM will participate in the Visa Ready Partner Program and has agreed to bundle its mobile point-of-sale hardware peripherals with Visa’s acceptance solutions to offer merchants globally a cost-efficient and secure way to accept card payments.
The popularity of mobile point-of-sale acceptance solutions among merchants is helping drive the migration from cash to electronic payments.
According to Moody’s, expanded use of credit and debit cards added $983 billion to global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) between 2008 and 2012 – the equivalent of creating 1.9 million new jobs.
During Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, February 25-28, the two companies will offer mobile point-of-sale acceptance demonstrations using a ROAM mobile acceptance device.
Meanwhile, Visa and Samsung announced their alliance to accelerate the availability of mobile payments globally.
According to the agreement, financial institutions that are planning to launch mobile payment programs will be able to use the Visa Mobile Provisioning Service1 to securely download payment account information to NFC-enabled Samsung devices.
Samsung will load the Visa payWave applet onto its mobile devices featuring NFC technology. Visa payWave is Visa’s mobile payment applet that enables consumers to make “wave and pay” contactless payments using mobile devices.
Won-Pyo Hong, president and head of Media Solution Center, Samsung Electronics, said: “We believe that we have a strong value proposition for financial institutions that will ultimately allow consumer choice in NFC payments.”
According to ABI Research, 1.95 billion NFC-enabled devices will ship in 2017.
The Visa Samsung global alliance is a first of its kind between a leading NFC handset manufacturer and payment network that is paving the way for the implementation of large scale mobile payment programs.
