This year will be a banner year for mobile payments. So says Visa Europe. In announcing results for 2012, the company also predicted that 2013 would see a mass rollout of Visa's V.me digital wallet giving consumers in the U.K., France and Spain access to Visa's first digital wallet. U.K. banks representing 80 percent of consumers have signed up to offer the V.me digital wallet, Visa said.

"The past six years have been about preparing and building the European payments infrastructure to support European commerce and the delivery of new payment technologies. The year ahead will see us putting mobile contactless payments into consumers’ hands and introducing digital wallets on a mass scale for the first time," said Peter Ayliffe, Visa Europe's chief executive. "In the U.K., where a quarter of all Visa card spend is online, banks representing the vast majority of U.K. consumers are lined up to launch V.me in 2013, providing a faster, simpler and safer way to pay online."

V.me is Visa's entry into the competitive digital wallet, giving consumers access to payment credentials from any device, from smartphone to PC to laptop, while enabling single click purchases. That's particularly helpful on the small screens of smartphones where typing in credit card numbers, expiration dates and shipping addresses can be more difficult.

The V.me digital wallet can hold any card from any brand and also protects consumers' payment data by shielding it from online merchants. Eventually, as mobile payments become more widespread, V.me service will integrate with point-of-sale devices.

"We have benefited from our investment in technology and security, which not only helped us deliver 100 percent processing availability and record low levels of fraud in 2012, but also enabled us to showcase mobile contactless payments at the London Olympics," Ayliffe said. "This investment also underpins the rollout of new payment technologies in 2013."

"As we continue to see the explosive adoption of mobile devices, our priority in 2013 is to give consumers faster, safer mobile ways to pay," he added.

A 2013 launch for V.me is a little later than expected. Early last year Visa said the digital wallet would reach consumers in the U.K., France and Spain by sometime last fall.

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