In remarks made during the Visa Insight conference in Barcelona, Spain, on April 8, Visa Europe chief executive Peter Ayliffe said the card association is planning to invest more than $144 million in mobile payments and e-commerce. 

According to the story in American Banker, Ayliffe said the investments will lead to rollouts of mobile payments programs starting at the end of this year. 

"Today, we have committed to accelerate this displacement of cash by bringing to the market ways to pay that bring true convergence between electronic payments and mobile and e-commerce technology," Ayliffe said in his speech to the conference.

The American Banker story said Visa Europe has invested about $1.4 billion in payment technology since 2004, including efforts to promote its transaction-processing infrastructure, contactless technology and mobile and e-commerce payments.