Visa announces payWave mobile payments provisioning service

Visa has unveiled a new level to their mobile payment system, payWave, which will provide an over-the-air smartphone provisioning service.

The announcement was made in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, and according to the company, this new service is designed to make it simpler for banks, operators, and transit operators to connect a consumer’s smartphone with Visa payment accounts.

Though consumers may not find this quite as thrilling as the release of apps for a mobile wallet, what Visa has now released what they feel is a primary element of the foundational infrastructure that will make it possible for NFC-based mobile payments to become mainstream.

They feel that letting mobile payments to occur over smartphones for an activation process that occurs over-the-air, the entire transaction experience will become increasingly seamless for both service providers and users. That said, because the system is based on NFC, it means that this will automatically create limitations, as it will be supported only be devices that include that technology.

At the moment, the majority of smartphones – including the Apple iPhone – are not yet equipped with NFC. Furthermore, though it looks as though there is an increase in the demand for mobile payment opportunities by consumers, it is not yet known whether they will adopt this particular technology in a large enough amount to make the entire process worthwhile.

This new provisioning system that was released by Visa was created with the help of Oberthur Technologies, and allows payment apps such as through payWave mobile payments technology to be used by consumer smartphones equipped with NFC to make transactions over-the-air.

For more mobile commerce headlines.