Visa gunning for your phone, announces Nokia and Android plans

Neither mobile banking apps nor mobile payment technologies are anything new, but the depth of Visa's newfound commitment to anything and everything mobile here is pretty unique. The company has announced a slew of initiatives to make it as frighteningly easy as possible for cardholders to do cool things with their accounts right from their phones starting with the launch of the Nokia 6212 Classic next month, which will serve up NFC-based contactless payments, cardholder-to-cardholder transfers, and realtime account alerts (subject to issuing bank availability). Meanwhile, they've wasted no time jumping on the Android bandwagon, revealing that they've hooked up with Chase to offer an Android app that delivers notifications, merchant "offers," and a location-based search of nearby retailers that accept Visa cards (which is pretty much all of them in our experience). If the Chase trial pans out, Visa plans to shop the Android app around to other issuing banks. Finally, there's also a new web-based mobile money transfer pilot going down that's scheduled to kick off around the end of the year involving several banks and "as many as" 6,000 cardholders; what are the odds that those 6,000 are going to be transferring much money among each other, though?

[Via CNET]

Read - Nokia partnership
Read - Android plans
Read - Mobile money transfer

[bob @ Sep 26th 2008 5:09AM]

Yays First Post YOo Noobz
^^

[DreamcastDC @ Sep 26th 2008 5:11AM]

Cool to see support for Android.

[paulo @ Sep 26th 2008 5:21AM]

This is already supported in Portugal since 2006 and runs on all java phones, and you can use even your debit card, no need for a visa or any other type of credit card. using this small sofware you can do almost everything you do using your online banking.
http://www.smso.net/MultiBanco#cite_note-9
http://www.vodafone.pt/main/Particulares/Servicos/ServicosUteis/TeleMB.htm

[Eastman @ Sep 26th 2008 6:06AM]

So since Android is so secure cos there is NOOO way to get malware on there it really is a awsome idea to partner here and add credit card info access to the mobile.


Am looking forward to the first screams on the bus when the fella next to you notices that his Visa has been maxxd out by some hacker :)

[Jash Sayani @ Sep 26th 2008 6:16AM]

What about an iPhone app in the AppStore...?!?

[Sam Zebian @ Sep 26th 2008 6:25AM]

I read the title really quickly and thought vista was coming to phones lol..

[matt merritt @ Sep 26th 2008 9:44AM]

I did too... about 4 times.

[YoYoYo @ Sep 26th 2008 7:08AM]

Just about had a heart attack when I misread the subject as "Vista gunning for...."

That said, if this can be securely managed, more power to 'em - Hope I can get a Ferengi style touchscreen phone with thumbprint scanner that runs this stuff. Just doubt that it can be locked down enough to be safe.

[Jirka @ Sep 26th 2008 7:09AM]

Same here. Need to start reading slower.

[daniel =] @ Sep 26th 2008 7:13AM]

you fail

[chefgon_ign @ Sep 26th 2008 9:37AM]

I don't really understand exactly what these products are for, but since I have the G1 pre-ordered and all my credit and debit cards happen to be Visa cards through Chase bank, I might as well give it a go.

[ihatewalks @ Sep 26th 2008 11:36AM]

6,000 people transferring money between themselves?

Well, as long as my weed dealer is one of the other 5,999 I'll be alright.

[jupiterthunder @ Sep 26th 2008 3:34PM]

Ah, consumerism. To get excited over making it easier to spend all my money.

[bstear @ Sep 29th 2008 2:02PM]

Why is the logo showing a Visa card being shoved in the robot's ass?

Gotta be a metaphor for something in there.