Visa Teams With Bank of America to Test Mobile Contactless Payments

Remember those tiny credit/debit cards you could attach to your keychain and wave over a POS (Point Of Sale) terminal at a cashier station or at a gas tank and automatically pay for items?

Well imagine waving your smartphone over the same terminal and paying for items from your credit card or directly from your bank account? Contactless payments may not be too far off as Visa is testing that exact same technology with the help of Bank of America and other technology makers.

Visa has created an iPhone case can hold a microSD NFC card (looks exactly like a microSD card used in smartphones) that can talk to a POS terminal and exchange account/payment information as long as they are in proximity of each other. You slip the case (containing the card) on your iPhone and essentially, make a purchase with your smartphone. Visa will be testing the technology with a select group of people (Bank of America employees and customers) in the New York area this fall.

Personally, I like my smartphone naked (no cases, covers, or screen protectors), so the idea of keeping the case handy to make mobile payments is kind of a turn off. But, the idea of a smaller wallet is attractive as well.

Visa isn’t the only company looking to make contactless payments a reality. AT&T, T-Mobile, AND Verizon have teamed up together to also try NFC embedded microSD cards in Atlanta and other cities to make smartphone payments using your Discover or Barclay Card. Hopefully their system will allow me to replace my current microSD card with a new NFC embedded card that can also store other data to eliminate the need for an additional case.

If order for this whole contactless payments system to work, people would have to create the demand by trusting their account information on a microSD card and businesses would have to adopt the technology by buying and installing the terminals to read the information.

I am an early adopter of this type of stuff and relish at the idea of just reducing “Bulky Wallet Pocket Syndrome” (I just made that up) and only needing my driver’s license, medical card(s), and my smartphone when I am out and about. If this technology takes off, maybe all I will need is my smartphone when I leave the house…I never leave home without it anyway.

About the Author
Terrance Gaines is a husband, father and self-proclaimed Technology Evangelist who shares tech news, reviews, tips and tricks on his blog BrothaTech.com as well as other sites and in print media. You can also find him talking "all things tech" on Twitter @BrothaTech.
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