Published on the 10/07/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Payments giant Visa has announced that Australia will be the site for the second roll-out of its V.me digital wallet with 45-plus local banks already signed up to support the endeavour…
A digital wallet service, which will allow Australians to store their card details online and access them from a desktop, tablet or smartphone to make online payments for goods and services will be launched before Christmas by Visa. The company’s V.me digital wallet was launched in the US in late 2012, and Australia will be only the second market in the world to experience the service according to Visa country manager Vipin Kalra.
In order to make the service simple for consumers Visa is relying on banks doing the heavy lifting and encouraging their customers to sign up for the service. Visa said it learned from its experience in the US that for the wallet to be a success “it has got to be simple for the consumer” and those banks which made the process easiest would do best. Three of Australia’s four big banks have committed to offering V.me, although the Commonwealth Bank, which has long fancied itself as a payments innovator, has yet to commit.
Users of the V.me wallet won’t have to have a Visa card to use it – Visa says they will be able to store rival cards from the likes of MasterCard in the V.me wallet too. Kalra acknowledged that to make the wallet successful, “it is critical we don’t make this a Visa-centric app”.
In fact it’s not an app at all – but an online service accessed via a browser and password-secured login. Once in the wallet users can pick which of their cards to use to make a payment on merchant sites which have also signed up to accept V.me payments. Local merchants already signalling their intent to accept V.me payments include JB HiFi, City Beach and Lorna Jane, although Visa’s intent is to make V.me a global service.
Kalra acknowledged that V.me required a “critical mass of financial institutions and merchants” to be successful.
In the future Visa plans to extend the capability of the V.me wallet, for example to be used to store and redeem loyalty points, or be used on an NFC-enabled smartphone to make payments using a contactless payment card such as Visa PayWave or MasterCard’s PayPass.
