Visa's payWave System Coming To Future NFC-Equipped Samsung Smartphones

Samsung is most certainly winning the Android war in terms of market share, profit share, and mind share. In fact, it's getting tougher and tougher for those other Android OEMs to make a dent in the market, with Samsung spending billions each on marketing alone. Needless to say, we suspect that Visa is pretty pumped about this new agreement. It's an expansion from the deal the two nailed down in time for the London Olympics in 2012, now branded as a "global alliance" that'll bring Visa's payWave app to future Samsung mobile devices with NFC chips in them.

As mobile payments continue to become more pervasive, the real war is on the platform side: whichever credit card company manages to secure the most deals with hardware makers is likely to win. According to the agreement, financial institutions that are planning to launch mobile payment programs will be able to use the Visa Mobile Provisioning Service to securely download payment account information to NFC-enabled Samsung devices. In addition, Samsung has agreed to load the Visa payWave applet onto its mobile devices featuring NFC technology. Visa payWave is Visa’s mobile payment applet that enables consumers to make “wave and pay” contactless payments using mobile devices.


In order to enable financial institutions to launch large scale mobile (NFC) payment programs, Samsung will offer banks the ability to load payment account information over-the-air to a secure chip embedded in Samsung devices, using Visa’s Mobile Provisioning Service which is linked to Samsung KMS (Key Management System) – a service that creates secure data storage domains for issuers.

Neither company is speaking up about what future hardware will utilize this stuff, but it's a sure bet that the impending Galaxy S IV will be amongst the first Visa-infused Samsung phones.
Tags:  Android, NFC, VISA, credit, paywave