Mobile phone? That'll do nicely
A new retrofit contactless mobile payment system from Visa and DeviceFidelity is to go on a live trial in Turkey.
While we were digging around for news on Visa’s digital wallet we found this news that somehow went under the Business Mobile radar from earlier in the month.
Visa are to launch Europe’s first microSD-based mobile payment system, with a trial project in Turkey with technology partners, DeviceFidelity, and Turkish Bank Akbank.
The aim of the trial project is to demonstrate how the microSD memory card slot can be used as a mobile payments solutions, without having to build in a separate Near Field Communications (NFC) card into the mobile or integrating the NFC technology into the card.
The solution uses DeviceFidelity’s In2Pay microSD technology and allows anyone with a phone that takes a microSD memory card to retrofit an NFC contactless payment solution.
Mary Carol Harris, Head of Mobile, Visa Europe said: “One of the key challenges to the success of mobile payments is the supply and availability of NFC handsets. Until a majority of mobile handsets offered in the market are supplied with integrated NFC, Visa is proactively working with innovators like DeviceFidelity and pioneers such as Akbank to harness the potential of new technologies. These solutions make the future of payment real today and are key to accelerating mobile payments in Turkey and across Europe. Once again, Visa, through Akbank and our strategic partners, are leading the mobile payments market.”
Deepak Jain, President and CEO of DeviceFidelity said: “We have always considered the European market to be at the leading edge of NFC innovation. With our relationship with Visa Europe, we intend to truly unlock the potential of NFC mobile payments, by enabling contactless transactions on currently available and upcoming popular user devices in Europe through the use of microSD.”
The project will commence with a number of Blackberry handsets popular with Akbank’s customer base and will expand over time to include an array of devices from manufacturers including HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia and Motorola. In addition to offering mobile payments functionality, the In2Pay microSD will also continue to offer digital storage, allowing users to take advantage of memory expansion for music, video and photographs.
The DeviceFidelity In2Pay solution is based on an industry standard Secure Element that is EMV and Global Platform compliant, supports Javacard and MiFare and comes with Open Platform architecture for seamless integration with Trusted Service Managers (TSM) and Wallet developers.
DeviceFidelity has already started licensing the In2Pay APIs to several European TSM providers, and banking software developers, with the intent to roll out creative new mobile commerce applications.
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