UPDATED 12:00 EDT / MAY 11 2011

Visa to Unleash a Digital Wallet Service This Fall

This is one of those “OMG, that’s shocking” news bits, as we have been expecting this to happen, Visa finally announced the roll out date of its digital wallet, a mobile payment service that it has been hinting to shell out this week. Its acquisitions lately, including CyberSource, Authorize.net and PlaySpan, gives an aroma of e-wallet. . The service’ prominent feature includes “click-to-buy” for e-commerce transactions.

Features include:

• Click-to-buy: Users will have an online ID and password to make e-commerce purchases instead of using your account number. This will be easy to use across both e-commerce and mobile commerce, and include such activity as paying for virtual goods inside of a game.
• The Wallet: You will be able to store multiple accounts in the digital wallet, including non-Visa payment account.
• Merchant offers: Users will be able to opt-in to receive discounts or promotions.

The product is scheduled to roll out this fall in the US and Canada, but a number of advanced features are going to roll out in other countries first, especially to those where card issuance has always been near to the ground. In terms of emerging markets, the company claims to help consumers in through the confusion of having way too much network operators, handset models and operating systems.

Visa’s offering will directly compete with Amazon and Paypal, asking for a username and password only instead of painstakingly typing a credit card number. This does not shake Paypal though.

“PayPal was built 12 years ago because traditional payment methods weren’t designed for the digital world,” said Paypal. “We’re light years ahead: More than 98 million people around the world have already trusted us with their digital wallets.”

However, you can’t deny the advantage of Visa’s immediate partnership with customers. But Amazon and Paypal are not the only competitors the credit card company should be worrying. They also have to keep a close eye on Mastercard, American Express and Discover which are working on the same service, as well as AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon currently working on a new mobile wallet network called Isis. Visa has partnered with 14 banks, credit card unions and financial processors.

Visa’s effort is a perfect match to the NFC technology that Google’s been pushing through via its Android devices. The handiness of hovering your phone over a tag and seeing its details, and then paying via a mobile payments platform (however it exactly works) is a perfect display of speed, flexibility and interoperability. Amazon is seriously considering NFC service for e-payments, so does MasterCard and Citigroup as they team with Google. Microsoft’s also going to ride in the trend by embedding NFC into their devices.


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