Visa Europe and Turkey’s bank Akbank are launching a memory card-based mobile payment system, using which consumers will be able to pay with their phones at any Visa point around the world.
The pilot program aims to demonstrate how (or whether) the memory card slot can be used in mobile payments solutions to enable contactless mobile payment features with regular, non-NFC enabled mobile devices.
As you may know, there are not that many NFC-enabled handsets on the market today. That prompted Visa to think outside the box and proactively work with innovators such as DeviceFidelity to “harness the potential of new technologies.”
The project will begin with Blackberry smartphones and will increase eventually to include a range of other phones from different manufacturers.
We’re definitely looking forward to see the results of this trial. If it proves to be working, we could get memory card-enabled contactless payments in no time. There’s something to look forward to, right?
[Via: WirelessFederation]