Samsung, Visa tie up for contactless card payments

MANILA, Philippines - Visa Inc. and Samsung Electronics have entered into an agreement to introduce a number of mobile schemes that would lead to “contactless” card payments.

Specifically, the agreement would pave the way for a global alliance that combines Visa’s expertise in payments and Samsung’s leadership in mobile device technology.

With this partnership, the two parties hope to significantly accelerate the availability of mobile payments globally.

Based on the agreement, financial institutions that are planning to launch mobile payment programs will be able to use the Visa Mobile Provisioning Service to securely download payment account information to NFC-enabled Samsung devices.

In addition, Samsung has agreed to load the Visa payWave applet onto its mobile devices featuring NFC technology. Visa payWave is Visa’s mobile payment applet that enables consumers to make “wave and pay” contactless payments using mobile devices.

“It makes perfect sense to introduce mobile contactless card payments given that mobile phones have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Our partnership with Samsung is only one of Visa’s many continued efforts to expand the ways people conduct secure, accessible and versatile payment transactions,” said Iain Jamieson, Visa country manager for the Philippines and Guam.

“Samsung has been a pioneer in NFC devices and is again leading the way in enabling NFC-based mobile payments. The partnership with Visa represents a step towards a global mobile payment platform.” said Won-Pyo Hong, president and head of media solution center at Samsung Electronics. “We believe that we have a strong value proposition for financial institutions that will ultimately allow consumer choice in NFC payments.”

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is the global communication standard that enables mobile devices to securely communicate with a payment terminal. ABI Research forecasts that a total of 1.95 billion NFC-enabled devices will ship in 20172.

Moreover, the Visa Samsung global alliance is a first of its kind between a leading NFC handset manufacturer and payment network that is paving the way for the implementation of large scale mobile payment programs.

In order to enable financial institutions to launch large scale mobile payment programs, Samsung will offer banks the ability to load payment account information over-the-air to a secure chip embedded in Samsung devices, using Visa’s Mobile Provisioning Service3 linked to Samsung KMS (Key Management System) – a service that creates secure data storage domains for issuers.