The time of paying through a mobile phone as the norm got one step closer this week following a deal between Visa and Samsung that will see Visa’s new payment app running on Samsung handsets. Customers will be able to add Visa payment account information via the app and then go on to make contactless payments using their mobile phones.

The companies’ joint support of near field communication (NFC) mobile payments will push the mobile payment technology forward on a global scale after they launch the app which they have called payWave applet with plans to also take the opportunity to build third party partnerships with financial institutions. Visa has set up a Mobile Provisioning Service to enable financial firms wishing to launch a mobile payments program to send payment account information to a secure chip in Samsung’s NFC-enabled devices.

According to Computer Weekly Pierre Combelles, business lead for the GSMA’s NFC programme “operators and vendors had come far after making the decision to build NFC handsets which would open the market for service providers. However, the industry now needs the support of the service providers to accelerate the adoption of NFC…” “Most new smartphones are NFC enabled…It’s fine to have a handset, but not if you don’t have the SIM for secure transactions,” he said.

The GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with 250 companies in the mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors.

Combelles went on to say that Barclays and Natwest are leading the UK forward with strong mobile banking schemes, but that the UK in general is behind Europe for mobile payments.

Half of UK Visa payments will be made through mobile devices by 2020, says Visa Europe, with 2013 predicted as the year for the acceleration of the use of mobile payments channel. The company claims that by the end of this year 50% of the UK’s population will have a contactless bank card and there will be 175,000 contactless payment terminals.

Sources: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240178545/Visa-and-Samsung-partner-to-accelerate-mobile-NFC-payments and http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240173670/Half-of-UK-Visa-payments-will-be-mobile-by-2020