Visa is opening up its Visa Ready programme, which cerifies products to handle payments, to include IoT companies, potentially allowing people to make purchases straight from a connected device – such as food from a smart fridge.
The first IoT companies joining Visa Ready all focus on payments for wearables and automobiles, with the company expecting a surge in further applicants soon.
This, the company says, can help retailers grow through the expansion of electronic payments.
Security will be provided by the Visa Token Service, which allows secure mobile and digital payments anywhere there is an Internet connection, boosting buying power significantly.
“More and more, consumers are relying on smart appliances and connected devices to make their lives easier,” said Jim McCarthy, executive vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships at Visa.
“By adding payments to these devices, we are turning virtually any Internet connection into a commerce experience – making secure payments seamless, and ultimately more accessible, to merchants and consumers.”
Visa figures show the volume of contactless transactions, which can be made for purchases up to the value of £30, grew by 250 percent last year in the UK.
Overall, contactless now accounts for one in every seven Visa transactions, up from just one in 25 a year ago, as mobile services such as Apple Pay help encourage more and more consumers to embrace the technology.
All clued up on mobile payments? Try our quiz!
Targetting AWS, Microsoft? British competition regulator soon to announce “behavioural” remedies for cloud sector
Move to Elon Musk rival. Former senior executive at X joins Sam Altman's venture formerly…
Bitcoin price rises towards $100,000, amid investor optimism of friendlier US regulatory landscape under Donald…
Judge Kaplan praises former FTX CTO Gary Wang for his co-operation against Sam Bankman-Fried during…
Explore the future of work with the Silicon In Focus Podcast. Discover how AI is…
Executive hits out at the DoJ's “staggering proposal” to force Google to sell off its…