Intel, Visa Partner on NFC Payments

Visa and Intel have announced a partnership that should make it easier for consumers to make mobile payments via phones and tablets powered by Intel chips.

Users will be able to wave an Intel-powered smartphone equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to make a payment quickly at retail points of sale, the companies said in a statement.

Visa has certified Intel’s smartphone reference design to work with Visa’s PayWave mobile payment application, and the mobile payment system will be extended to licensees building smartphones with Intel chips.

Intel-based smartphones aren’t on the market yet but Lenovo, Motorola, Orange and Lava, an Indian-based smartphone vendor, are expected to release models in the future. Visa’s payment system will be implemented initially in smartphone reference designs that use Intel’s Atom Z2460 chip.

The multiyear agreement will extend to several different types of devices, the companies said. The Atom Z2460 is also headed for tablets from companies such as Vizio.

Visa’s mobile payment service is supposed to let mobile operators and banks deliver the PayWave application over the air to an NFC handset. The service will also deliver payment account information to smartphones securely.

The partnership was announced at the Mobile World Congress, which is being held in Barcelona this week. The technology is being demonstrated there with Visa’s new digital wallet service, V.me.

For more blogs, stories, photos, and video from the world’s largest mobile show, check out PCWorld’s complete coverage of Mobile World Congress 2012.