Mobile World Congress: Verifone Announces New NFC Solutions

Electronic payments provider Verifone took advantage of Mobile World Conference in Barcelona to make a couple of, well, mobile payments announcements.

First and foremost, Verifone announced it will provide Turkish Garanti Bank ($78 billion in assets), in partnership with mobile carrier Avea, with a nationwide mobile payment program using integrated Near Field Communications SIM cards. The widespread rollout of the program follows a successful pilot that has already supplied some 10,000 NFC-capable devices with Garanti for merchant use.

"Garanti demonstrated that NFC is now commercially viable," said Soner Casur, vice president and general manager of VeriFone South East Europe. "The merchant/consumer interface is crucial to success of NFC mobile payment adoption and VeriFone is thrilled to provide key payment acceptance solutions that make it easy to transition to this new era of mobile payments."

Verifone also announced a global edition of its PAYware mobile payment solution for smartphones, which supports NFC, Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) and a PCI-compliant PIN keypad to support chip and pin transactions. The global PAYware solution will become available in Canada and the United Kingdom in the first quarter of this year, and will be rolled out in additional European, Latin American and Asian markets throughout 2011.

"PAYware Mobile struck a chord with micro merchants in North America who wanted to be able to quickly and securely accept credit card payments anywhere by leveraging a cost-effective, mobile smart phone," said Paul Rasori, VeriFone senior vice president of marketing. "VeriFone is now leveraging our global partnerships and distribution capabilities to provide a mobile payment platform that supports regional demands for EMV, NFC-based applications, and secure, PCI-compliant PIN entry."