Visa has launched a mobile platform that it says will "lay the foundation" for commercial deployment of contactless mobile payments and near-field communications (NFC) services around the world.
The platform has a number of applications and tools designed to increase collaboration between financial services and mobile tech companies via NFC, a short-range wireless technology similar to RFID that is commonly used for mobile payments.
The electronic payments giant launched the platform at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Patrick Gauthier, senior vice president of innovation at Visa said the launch of the mobile platform is a "significant industry milestone", as it will provide the means for trials and pave the way for commercial introduction of mobile payment in a large-scale retail environment.
Nokia's head of NFC global market development, Gerhard Romen, agreed. He told silicon.com the platform is "really a major step forward" for mobile NFC.
Romen said the challenge with NFC has been making mobile devices and other infrastructure, such as NFC readers, interoperable but now the "technology is coming together".
Until now, Asia has adopted NFC more readily than other parts of the world, with operator NTT DoCoMo launching contactless payment phones in Japan in 2005.
Nokia and Visa have already trialled the tech, collaborating on an NFC pilot in Malaysia in April last year.
Regarding NFC rollouts in Europe and the US, Romen said: "The market approach will probably be that of a local, regional and then broader deployment."
Romen expects retailers to realise the benefits of the technology - such as increased security and convenience for consumers - as more trials take place.
But he added this kind of development "doesn't happen overnight". He envisages more pilots during 2007 which will pick up "more and more" during 2008 and 2009.
Tim Ferguson of Silicon.com reported from London.
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