Android phones to issue credit-card alerts

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 26 Sep 2008 at 10:09

Visa plans to offer services to phones powered by Google's Android including alerts when your credit card has been used.

The credit-card network also says that Nokia will start selling the 6212 phone in October, which users could wave at an electronic reader to make payments and use for remote payments and money transfers.

Visa is still developing its application to allow in-store "contactless" payments using an Android phone. But it claims these services - already common in countries such as Japan - may not take off for years as stores would need to install new card readers and phones with the corresponding technology would need to be in wider use.

In the meantime, Visa will offer transaction alerts and discount offers from merchants to Android users. The application will also work with Google maps to help users find nearby cash machines and stores where special offers are available.

Visa says that for the first few months the application will be available only to Android phone users who also have Visa cards issued by JPMorgan Chase banks. It plans to open the application to other banks in 2009.

Earlier this week, Google unveiled the first Android-powered phone, the T-Mobile G1. But the initial Android device does not include hardware to support contactless credit card payments.

Tim Attinger, Visa's global head of product development, said that while mobile payment services have been slow to take off, the company sees mobile phones as key to adding new customers. Only 1.6 billion Visa cards are in use today, compared with more than 3 billion people with mobile phones.

"We're absolutely going to start porting financial services into those," Attinger says.