Visa to launch contactless mobile payments
Posted on: April 10, 2009 – Filed under: Lisbon
Malaysia is first country get NFC-based system, backed by Maxis, Nokia and Maybank.
The commercial launch follows a trial period of the service, which allows people to pay for stuff by waving their handset across a reader.
The initiative is backed by local bank Maybank, operator Maxis and 3,000 NFC-enabled 6212 handsets supplied by Nokia.
Nearly 2,000 merchants are taking part in the scheme, mostly in and around the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.
Visa will be rolling the service out in other markets over the coming months.
Of course, contactless mobile payments have been a reality for sometime in Japan, where Sony’s proprietary FeliCa technology is widely used.
However, Visa says that its solution is based on industry standard NFC technology and as such has more chance of international success.
In ME.