During this morning's keynote Visa president and CEO John Coghlan announced his company's plans for mobile financial services, partnerships with VeriSign and Ecrio and a strategic investment in the dotMobi initiative. Coghlan said the value proposition for mobile payments had four parts: These new services and devices will attract new wireless subscribers, expand existing relationships by driving ARPU, provide greater convenience for consumers and increase speeds of transactions.
The Visa mobile platform supports NFC point of sale purchases at stores and restaurants, mobile-to-mobile payments, banking services and ticketing or coupons through Ecrio. Visa made an undisclosed investment in the dotMobi initiative, which oversees a top level domain for websites tailored for the mobile browser. Coghlan also announced a deal with Kyocera for an NFC-enabled handset.
Coghlan also cited some interesting internal metrics surrounding mobile payments: 57 percent of consumers with a debit or credit card are interested in mobile payments; 90 percent of those interested in the service said they would pay more for a device with payment capabilities; 64 percent of 18 to 42-year-olds would consider switching carriers for to get mobile payment services and 58 percent of consumers in that age bracket would switch banks to do so. Perhaps most interestingly, by a measure of 5 to 1, those polled would prefer that payments appear on their credit card statement, rather than their mobile bills. That's one metric the carriers might cringe at.
Coghlan concluded: "The mobile device is simply the most promising new form of payment available today." -Brian