(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Making payments with mobile phones enabled with near field communications, or NFC, is expected to grow significantly as mobile technologies become more advanced and the infrastructure to support NFC payments falls into place.
NFC is increasingly being adopted by payment networks, banks, merchants, mobile device manufacturers and mobile network operators as the global standard for mobile payments. This year, analysts anticipate that smartphone shipments will grow by over 38.6 per cent year-on-year, reflecting the increasingly interactive relationship consumers have with their phones.
"NFC technology is transforming mobile phones into payment devices that will change the way people live, work and play," said said Niki Manby, head of Emerging Products for Visa Asia Pacific, Central Europe, Middle East and Africa. "NFC payments have enormous potential and we are committed to providing the convenience of this technology in a secure manner to our customers."
There is an undeniable demand for contactless transactions using the mobile phone. Juniper Research predicts that NFC mobile payments are set to exceed $180 billion worldwide in 2017. Visa is committed to enabling more consumers to make payments from their phones to a contactless terminal securely and efficiently. In the Middle East, Visa has worked closely with mobile network operators, handset manufacturers and financial institutions, merchants and technology providers to develop and commercialise mobile payments and related services.
In Kuwait, for example, Visa partnered with the National Bank of Kuwait and Zain to deliver the region's first NFC mobile payment trial, in a move that gave up to 350 NBK Visa cardholders the convenience and security of paying for their purchases using Visa payWave on their Nokia 6212 phones at over 70 merchant partner outlets in The Avenues, Kuwait's largest mall.
In the UAE, Visa is working together with leading industry players etisalat and Emirates NBD on a mobile contactless technology trial, enabling Emirates NBD Visa cardholders to purchase goods and services with their NFC-enabled mobile phones, with purchases charged directly to the customer's Emirates NBD Visa credit card account.
Visa's commitment to driving NFC acceptance across the region is paving the way for mobile device manufacturers, mobile operators and retailers to partner with financial institutions to offer Visa mobile payment functionality to consumers globally.
In order to make NFC-based payments an everyday reality, three components of the NFC ecosystem need to be in place - compatible handsets and hardware, a viable support infrastructure, and a well-established contactless payment acceptance infrastructure. Visa is working closely with industry partners to develop a robust ecosystem which will enable consumers to make payments faster and more conveniently.
The development of NFC-enabled hardware, payment applications and convenient user interface applications, will be at the forefront of contactless mobile payments.
Visa's payWave acceptance technology uses industry standards such as ISO 14443, EMV and Global Platform that are compatible with existing contactless payments terminals already installed at retail outlets worldwide.
Earlier this year, Visa announced a new service, Visa Mobile Provisioning Solutions, that provides financial institutions and mobile network operators a one-stop solution to securely download payment account information to NFC-enabled smartphones. This new service was developed in collaboration with Oberthur.
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