my Treo 750v and I: Visa wants your mobile digital money too

Like it’s not enough for the world’s largest credit card organization to have our money in its bank accounts, Visa has announced on Thursday to make an aggressive moves to the era of mobile digital money. The moves consist of three separate partnerships with different group of companies: Nokia, Google & U.S. Bancorp. I’ll break them down each by the companies, so it’ll be easier for you to read…

Visa – Nokia. It’s actually an old news, repeated over and over again. This is the many times you and I heard of the use NFC for contactless & wireless payment, and Nokia is still embedding NFC technology into its middle-range handset: the 6212 Classic edition, which is slated to launch in Oct. 2009. Please my old posts about NFC and other use of electronic wallet, for more informations surrounding these technologies.

Pam Zuercher head of global product innovation for Visa, said in an interview that by placing the smartcard inside the phone, a user's physical wallet can be replicated. Each phone will be able to store several accounts, and the application can be password protected with a PIN or remotely disabled if the phone is lost or stolen, she said.

With the new technology, consumers will be able to use their Visa account to pay for goods and services; initiate mobile money transfers to other individuals with Visa accounts; receive near real-time notifications of activity on their Visa account; and "opt in" to receive offers and discounts from merchants, Visa said.

Visa – Google Android. Visa is keen enough to catch on the latest trend of mobile world; the Android platform, which I assume it’s because of the open source platform that attracts Visa rather than the stability of the new mobile platform itself. Visa is already developing a set of services to become native apps for Android, which will be available for Chase Visa cardholders. The Visa mobile applications developed for the Android platform will initially deliver three powerful services, they are:

Alerts: Consumers will receive near real-time notification of purchase activity based on customized cardholder preferences.
Offers: Consumers will receive targeted offers from merchants directly to their phone.
Locator: The Locator service is expected to integrate with technology developed by Google, such as Google Maps and Google location-based services, to show consumers nearby locations of merchants sending them offers, or of an ATM that accepts Visa. The location would be called out on a map displayed on the mobile device screen.

Visa – U.S. Bancorp. Visa also said that it would partner with U.S. Bancorp, the owner of U.S. Bank, to allow consumers to transfer money from one Visa customer to another by way of mobile phones through a pilot program. "The other side of that coin is remote payment," Zuercher said. "We're extending the ecommerce capabilities to the mobile channel, including SMS, and we're extending authentication to mobile devices as well."

This initiation movements by Visa can be considered as a good sign for mobile world, where we’ll at last be able to enjoy the real use of electronic wallet with our favorite smartphones. But the one ultimate question will remain the same, like always: when will it be used globally?