In an effort to bring mobile payments to the mass market, Visa has partnered with Vodafone to put Visa payWave on NFC-enabled smartphones. As a result, shoppers will be able to pay for goods and services by waving or tapping their phones.
Due to launch this spring across Vodafone markets, Visa payWave will make the Visa prepaid account available to users of Vodafone’s stored value account. Cheaper items will be able to be purchased with just a wave of a smartphone, while those costing more than 15 GBP will require a pin code to be entered.
According to the carrier’s CEO Vittorio, the new service represents the “next stage of the smartphone revolution,” while Visa said it has the potential to “transform the way people pay and get paid the world over.”
All said, we think now it’s all about marketing Visa payWave to merchants and service providers to adopt the technology and allow NFC-based magic to happen in their stores. We’ll see how that goes…