Smartphones are leading the charge in the creation of a wallet free payment system. Visa Canada‘s head of mobile innovation, Derek Colfer, believes that this new paradigm is already possible thanks to near field communications (NFC). Colfer spoke to TechVibes about the mobile payment future and why Visa is focusing on the NFC standard. He says, “The original Visa promise was that you could use this piece of plastic anywhere with zero-liability. The solution was scalable and interoperable. The only protocol out there today that mimics the interoperability, scale and security that plastic promised and delivered on today is NFC.”
Canadians already utilize NFC technology thanks to plastic cards that have NFC antennas. So all a user has to do is wave their card in front of a sensor with out making any contact for payment. Colfer claims that the method is quite popular in Canada with a payment taking place every 0.6 seconds.
Visa believes that this is a great way to get Canadian users accustomed to using NFC and Colfers says, “The beauty of it is that once you start to wave your card. There is no difference between waving a card and waving a phone.”
The is one road block and that is the $50 limit on NFC purchases. Colfer thinks this needs to be removed in order for the adoption of the technology among consumers. Overall Visa Canada thinks that NFC payment methods are ripe for growth in Canada because of the high percentage of smartphones users in the country. Colfer has said the company has completed its pilot programs and is looking at commercial release of mobile payments methods.
Visa recently approved almost 150 devices for NFC payments and is quickly adding to that list. Visa’s technology will work with “9 out of 10 major device manufacturers and 4 out of the 5 major operating systems.” The only major smartphone not on the list is Apple because its iPhone does not contain NFC technology yet. Colfer assures users that, “when and if Apple puts NFC in their devices, Visa will be there to certify these as well.”
Even with mobile payments at our doorsteps, Colfer says that the mobile wallet is still some time away. He adds that, “We are nowhere near providing the consumer with a mobile wallet until we can take everything out of your cowhide wallet and put it in your digital wallet—this means your drivers license, your transit pass, your loyalty cards, your library cards. There is ground to cover to fulfill the promise of leaving your wallet behind and just using your phone. So what we are doing is starting with payments which is a good place to start.”
Source: TechVibes
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