Visa Announces Collaborations for Mobile Payment

In a keynote, during the CTIA Wireless conference, Visa USA President and CEO Philip Coughlan detailed the steps that Visa is taking to advance mobile payments. According to him, mobile payment is currently at a critical moment in its development and it would take close collaboration between wireless and payment card industries to realize its full potential. Coghlan also announced Visa's commitment to partner with wireless and financial industry leaders enabled by the Visa mobile platform.

"Given the striking similarities in the paths our two industries have traveled, it is only natural we have arrived at a moment of convergence," Coghlan said. "In fact, the convergence of payments and mobile communications is not just logical - it is inevitable."

Strategic partnerships and alliances with quite a few companies including dotMobi, Ecrio, VeriSign, Qualcomm and Kyocera Wireless were announced. Also, a survey recently conducted by Visa revealed that more than half of those surveyed were interested in getting a phone that includes a payment application, after being shown what a payment-enabled phone looks like, with nearly 90 percent out of those who were interested saying they would pay extra to get a phone with this feature.

Sixty four percent claimed that, assuming they could keep their phone number, they would consider switching from one mobile operator that doesn't offer mobile payment services to one that does and fifty eight percent would consider switching financial institutions to get access to such services.

"These numbers show me that younger consumers want the best of both worlds -- they want the freedom and functionality of a mobile phone with the security, convenience and ease of use of their debit or credit card," Coghlan said.