Visa partners with NeuStar to boost to mobile payment services

By Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 23 June 2009 12:57

Technology

A new partnership between Visa - operator of the world's largest retail electronic payments network - and NeuStar, a global provider or interconnection services to mobile operators, promises to give the nascent mobile payments industry a major boost.

The two promise that their alliance will combine the reliability, scale and security of Visa's global payment network with NeuStar's carrier grade infrastructure, which provides critical interconnection services to global network operators and their partners to enable the seamless delivery of mobile services to consumers worldwide.

According to Elizabeth Buse, head of product at Visa, "The Visa-NeuStar alliance provides Visa with a single point of connection to mobile network operators around the globe and supports Visa's global strategy to extend its products and services to the mobile channel. This initiative has the potential to accelerate delivery of mobile financial services in both emerging and developed economies. Those services include mobile payments, wireless top-up of prepaid accounts, money transfer, value-added services such as alerts and offers and mobile acceptance of electronic payments."

Visa and NeuStar say they "share a heritage of enabling complex, trusted transactions, and providing the security and global interoperability that has enabled the growth of electronic payments and mobile telecommunications, two industries that now must collaborate in new ways."

NeuStar acts as a neutral intermediary to facilitate the transfer of data between mobile operators and other collaborating parties needed to support the delivery of mobile services to consumers. It claims to add value by providing a single point of contact for all services, simplifying the task for mobile operators and their partners to connect and offer new services to their subscribers.

The two promise that their alliance will
- Enable new channels through which Visa's financial institution clients can reach their customers when and where they are ready to use mobile financial services;
- Create new revenue streams by offering a new suite of financial services such as mobile transaction alerts and offers;
- Enable the delivery of mobile financial services - including mobile remote payments for services such as bill payment and top-up for wireless airtime minutes and mobile money transfer - to consumers in geographies with low penetration of payment products and financial services;
- Improve time to market for mobile financial services by providing standardised and scalable infrastructure along with best practices for mobile money applications.
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