Visa, Sprint Nextel move ahead on mobile commerce: Nokia phone to run Visa offerings for testing

Visa Inc. outlined a series of initiatives with three big-name partners in an effort to make mobile payment services “broadly available” to U.S. consumers by year’s end.
Visa next month will begin rolling out m-commerce offerings for Nokia Corp. phones, beginning with the handset maker’s 6212 Classic phone. The services will include contactless payments, remote payments, money transfer, alerts and notifications, and “will first be made available for trial use by interested financial institutions.”
The finance giant also said it will develop a set of services centered on Google Inc.’s Android platform that will allow Chase Visa cardholders to receive wireless notifications about transaction activity on their accounts and receive offers from partnering merchants. Consumers will also be able to use Google’s location-based technology to find ATMs and retailers that accept Visa.
Finally, the company will team with U.S. Bank to launch a mobile money transfer pilot program that will enable as many as 6,000 Visa cardholders to use their phones to send funds directly to other cardholders. The pilot will use a Web-based application and is slated to launch by the end of 2008.
The announcements follow last month’s news that Visa is partnering with eight financial institutions to deliver text alerts to its cardholders. “With more consumers relying on their mobile devices to simplify their everyday lives, Visa has a significant opportunity to streamline and secure the way people send and receive money,” said Elizabeth Buse, Visa’s global head of product.
Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel Corp. introduced a Web-based application that will support m-banking functions and deliver peer-to-peer payments via PayPal. MyMoneyManager, which is available free aside from the carrier’s data charges, allows customers of BB&T, Citibank, IBC Bank and PNC Bank to conduct banking functions on their phones; users can also send funds to others with PayPal accounts.
The app can be downloaded from Sprint Nextel’s deck, and the operator said it plans to preload the offering on handsets and expand the application to support other banks and financial services companies.