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Intel joins Visa in NFC, m-commerce partnership

Published

Feb. 27, 2012

Visa has been busy on the first day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Along with its Vodafone and Oberthur Technologies partnerships, the company is a part of a new strategic alliance with Intel Corp. During a press conference at MWC, the companies outlined their plans to collaborate on creating a consistent, streamlined, secure mobile commerce experience across Intel Atom-based smartphones and tablets, the companies said. 

"Visa's agreement with Intel paves the way for financial institutions around the globe to offer their account holders mobile payments and financial services using innovative mobile devices and technologies designed by Intel," said John Partridge, president, Visa Inc., during the press conference.

Partridge said the agreement is another example of Visa making mobile payments broadly available across devices and operating systems and ensuring mobile commerce apps conform with technology and security standards established by the global payments industry.

According to an announcement, the initial phase of the agreement between the two companies include:

  • Visa has certified Intel's Smartphone Reference Device powered by the Intel Atom processor Z2460 for use with Visa's payWave contactless mobile payment technology. The companies said that will enable turn-key implementation for OEMs delivering NFC-enabled smartphones.
  • The Intel Smartphone Reference Device will host the Visa payWave payment application and will feature NFC technologies.
  • When used in combination with a Visa-compliant UICC, smartphones based on the Intel Smartphone Reference Device handset can connect to Visa Inc.'s mobile provisioning service. That gives financial institutions and mobile operators the ability to provision Visa payment accounts to the secure chip on NFC-equipped smartphones.

"Intel's strategy is to enable more secure and compelling user experiences across a range of Intel-based mobile devices," said Intel VP and GM Mike Bell. "Our alliance with Visa builds on this strategy and brings worldwide mobile payment and commerce solutions to Intel-based devices."

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