It's A Crazy Visa World...We Just Live In It

So since I was a slacker yesterday (I'm trying to re-coup from the trauma that is packing up your entire life and moving), we're going to double-dose it today. Let's get started.

Oh Visa. You temptress. I looked away from just one hot second and you're busy doing all sorts of things that I almost missed. So, on top of being "in it" with da ISIS (DA Bears. 'Nuff said.) that I mentioned in the last post, Visa is continuing to push forward in its mobile capabilities by capitalizing on its existing solution in its proprietary PayWave technology. But how? You know, by doing what we do every night Pinky, creating the world's largest mobile partnership. In their press release, they report that,

Visa will provide the payment network, product suite, and branding, while Vodafone contributes its 398 million customers in 30 countries on five continents. The companies are calling the result the world’s largest partnership between a global payment network and a mobile operator.

So basically, what I'm hearing is that this is kind of like the 16th century when there was a huge amount of colonization and a major land grab is occurring before my eyes.Tata and DoCoMo are all over this business, capitalizing in India and Japan, Motorola (mobility) and Google are getting in bed together to try to attack it by controlling the baseline functionality (which, I think, might be more effective) and  MasterCard is trying to make in-roads into Latin America with Telefonica with Wanda. But where is American Express? What's Discover doing? My prediction: American Express will use its existing relationships with international processors/issuers that are part of their network to acquire/buy into the mobile payments game. Discover, who has brought back the old-school black card of my mom's era, seems to be more interested in exploring some options-- most recently working with OboPay to increase the volume that they can process on Discover rails. Wholly interesting to see where the second-tier (in terms of size) players will be going-- here's looking at you Capital One.

But really, back to my infatuation with Visa. Visa apparently, when I was distracted, has also partnered with Intel to develop mobile solutions for developed and developing countries. In the statement that was released, they basically agreed that Visa would (again using PayWave) offer the functionality and Intel would be providing the hardware (mostly terminals,but also the Intel Smartphone Reference Device (ISRD)). The one cool thing about this is, if a user is using a ISRD equipped smartphone (and is Visa UICC compliant of course) they can provision their smarpthone over the air by downloading and encrypting an existing NFC chip within the phone. Slightly more convenient than sending away for one I suppose...I also want to point out that this is very interesting as it's also becoming a trend-- ROAM recently announced its partnership with Ingenico, another example of a payments-oriented firm partnering with a hardware-focused firm. They took it a step further though, as Ingenico is now a majority shareholder in ROAMData, which could benefit ROAM by allowing them to expand more aggressively internationally (Ingenico is based in France).

Visa is also getting into the white-labeling business (for those non-nerdy/ consultants out there, this basically means that one company, Company X say, will build and provide a functionality that it will then sell to a different company (Company Y). Company Y buys it, and works with Company X to brand it so that no one is the wiser that it wasn't a homegrown functionality). Visa recently announced that it will be providing a mobile suite for FSIs. It will offer basic functionality (checking balances, transfers of money, real time alerts, etc), but is still interesting in the sense that I can see Visa really expanding beyond typical issuer roles and edging into roles typically reserved for technology companies or start ups like Kony or Monitise..But oh wait. For perfect transparency, they developed this suite with Monitise, so... in some ways, they're really just stealing the capabilities Monitise has always provided. Sneaky-sneaky Visa. Still, leveraging the best practices and strengths of their valued partnerships could be a legitimate component of their growth strategy (Translation: they could be way more productive by stealing the work done by smaller companies they acquire).

I know, I know, it's a lot of mobile-related stuff today. But mobile is apparently important. It's expected to grow exponentially and, particularly in tablet, estimates indicate 19% of households already own one and a 20% increase will occur int he next year. Fiserv says so.

Final question: is this for real? Talking about p0wning some n00bs. Haha... this could take nerdiness to a whole new awesome level. Rocksaurs!