There’s been a lot of talk lately about the so-called “digital wallet” — take, for example, the amount of coverage on Technologizer (see here, here, and here) — ut most of it has revolved around NFC. Of course, you need an NFC-capable device to take advantage of that.

Visa is working on a non-NFC solution that aims to make the process of online purchases both from the desktop and mobile phone a lot easier, the New York Times’ Digits blog reports. Essentially, Visa would associate a consumer’s credit card number with a set of credentials. These would be valid across any participating site.

Consumers would only need to sign in to pay for their purchases. It’s not clear whether Visa’s payment offering would also negate the need to enter address information as well; that would certainly be nice.

The service is set to be launched by the end of the year, likely first in social and online gaming, and then to traditional e-retail later on. The move also will likely dovetail with the credit card provider’s efforts in NFC, and its already announced service to send payments to any Visa card electronically.

Like I’ve said before, 2011 appears to be the year of NFC and mobile payments. It’s just a matter now of actually getting one of these services live and available to the general public.

 
Comments are closed


Read more: digital wallet, mobile payments, NFC