As part of the marketing plan for the London Olympics 2012, Samsung is teaming-up with Visa to launch an “iconic” phone. We don’t have the specifics aside from the fact that the upcoming device will pack some Olympics-themed content and NFC capabilities making it mobile payments-ready.
The Korean company was quiet about its plans and we (actually our source) got the information from Sandra Alzetta, Head of innovation and new product development at Visa Europe, during the company’s first European security summit in Frankfurt.
Visa, which is the official sponsor of the London 2012 games, wants to use the games to push its contactless payments agenda forward. To do that, Visa is working to bring NFC chips in microSD cards, which can be used by majority of today’s phones, excluding the iPhone and Windows Phone devices. The goal is have almost 160,000 NFC-enabled terminals in Europe next year, 70,000 of which will be in British shops, bars and restaurants.
We love the idea and are looking forward to test out NFC-based mobile payments as soon as they launch…
[Via: pocket-lint]