V.me is Just the First Step for Visa, It Seemed at the Mobile World Congress
In a talk with a Visa representative at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the biggest of its kind in the world, I was quite surprised that there wasn’t a V.me specific representative on hand to talk about the product. But do not fear, Visa’s team is very much into V.me and the company’s presence shows a bit of a different approach to payments that may yet come out of a project that at first sounded like just a brilliant domain choice. 😉
Visa had one of the more interesting booths in the hardware section of the Mobile World Congress presentation area. While V.me is something new, Visa is still thinking about other payment methods in terms of how technology can push them forward. We talked about basic mobile payments that people need: topups, utility payments, ticketing, etc. So no, it’s not just about NFC or V.me. At least that’s what Visa is saying, but looking at the V.me website you can see thats the exact way they are approaching developers and new merchants.
Interestingly, Visa is working with lots of partners around the world. A new project in India was created through a joint venture with a UK company called Monetize, which took care of the technology portion of the project.
V.future
My question about regional centres that could help developers from Eastern Europe for exampel was answered with an emphasis on the inclusion of local Visa teams: a mix. While we still can’t be sure what kind of mix of local Visa team members and new V.me people will work out in the end, the main development of .me is staying firmly in Visa’s headquaters in California.
Specifically at the Mobile World Congress, Visa was also showing off and demonstrating examples of user interfaces that you could use to control your v.me wallet. The future development of this project will, according to Visa’s representatives, depend on what developers can do with the new development program. One is experience is simple shopping that you know through buying stuff online, while the other might be something completely different thanks to developer’s input a.k.a. integration.
