Visa to Launch Contactless Mobile Payments for iPhone

Want to pay for purchases by waving your iPhone in front of a payment terminal at checkout? That will soon be a reality thanks to a new partnership between Visa Inc. and DeviceFidelity, who have teamed up to launch a mobile payment technology for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS devices.

payWave for iPhone

According to the release, the new Apple-certifed technology combines a protective iPhone case with a secure memory card that will host Visa’s contactless payment application, Visa payWave.

The iPhone-enabled payWave technology, too, will be made available at thousands of merchants, claims the release, including fast food restaurants, retail stores, in taxis, during sporting events (such as baseball games) and even at vending machines that have contactless payment terminals.

Beyond iPhone: Works on Any Phone with a Memory Card Slot

What’s even better about this news is that the mobile payment technology won’t be limited to iPhones. It will also work with "a majority of smart phones that have a slot for a memory card," which means that owners of other popular smartphones won’t necessarily be out of luck. To use Visa’s technology on non-iPhones, users can insert the card into their phone’s memory slot to transform their phones into mobile payment devices.

Apparently, Visa has found a workaround for the lack of NFC phones by embedding the computer chip needed into specially designed iPhone cases instead.

Source:    RWW


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