Visa certifies Samsung, LG and BlackBerry NFC phones for mobile payments

The Samsung Galaxy S II, LG Optimus Net NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900/9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9360/9380 have now been added to the list of approved Visa payments products, enabling financial institutions to use them in commercial NFC deployments for the first time.

VISA: Six NFC phones good for PayWave

Visa Inc and Visa Europe have jointly announced that six NFC phones have now been certified for SIM-based NFC mobile payments and have been added to the list of Visa-compliant payment products available for commercial deployment by financial institutions.
The six phones certified for use with Visa PayWave are the Samsung Galaxy S II, the LG Optimus Net NFC, the BlackBerry Bold 9900, the BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380 and the BlackBerry Curve 9360.
The certification "paves the way for mobile device manufacturers, mobile operators and retailers to partner with financial institutions to offer Visa mobile payment functionality to consumers globally," says the payments network.
"The players are now in place for mobile payments to become a reality," explains Sandra Alzetta, who heads innovation strategy and mobile business at Visa Europe. "We are working with our member banks, mobile network operators and key handset partners to ensure that future payment technologies are as easy, intuitive and secure as card-based transactions are today. Today's announcement plays a significant role in getting those new technologies into the hands of the consumer."
Visa completed work on its NFC compliance programme and certified the first NFC product, DeviceFidelity's In2Pay microSD device, in December 2010. MasterCard certified its first two devices for PayPass payments, the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and BlackBerry Curve 9360, in October 2011.