Visa Europe recently announced a partnership with Telefónica Digital, and at the same time, forecasted that by 2020, 50 percent of Visa transactions will be from a mobile device. PYMNTS.com spoke with Mary Carol Harris, Vice President and Head of Mobile, Visa Europe, and she gave us the inside scoop on how this partnership is shaping the future of mobile-based payments services in the U.K.
Visa Europe has recently announced a partnership with Telefónica Digital. What should consumers expect in terms of product and service innovation in the areas of NFC, mobile point of sale and merchant offers?
We see massive potential in mobile-based payments services because smartphones accompany their users throughout the day. As a connected device, smartphones offer an incredibly convenient way for consumers to pay and manage their money and hold the potential to become the ‘remote control’ for consumers’ entire financial lives.
We’ve been working on making mobile payments a reality since 1999, both at the point of sale and for online and ecommerce payments through smartphone internet browsers. We forecast that by 2020, 50 percent of Visa transactions will be from a mobile device and working with partners from across the industry is vital to supporting this profound shift in consumer habits.
While it’s too early to share details on specific products and services related to our partnership with Telefónica Digital, we’re looking at areas including mobile wallets, NFC contactless payments, acquirer processing, mobile point of sale, and loyalty and data analytics.
This agreement builds on Telefónica and Visa Europe’s existing relationship in markets such as UK and Ireland? What other European markets are also going to be targeted and what possible enhancements should be expected in UK and Ireland?
Visa Europe has a long-standing relationship with Telefónica and it’s great to see our relationship expand across Europe. We have a shared heritage in areas like our joint project to offer Visa prepaid cards in the O2 Wallet in the UK, as well as running our 2010 mobile payments pilot in Sitges, Spain, where we worked with Telefónica to trial mobile payments with 1,500 users and 500 merchants across the city.
Last year Telefónica formed a joint venture with MasterCard to offer mobile financial services for 65 million consumers in Brazil. How many European consumers do you anticipate will be able to take advantage of Visa Europe and Telefónica Digital partnership?
We’ve been working to make mobile payments a reality for a long time but we’ve really seen momentum build in recent years. Each partnership, product and service announcement add to this momentum and brings us closer to mainstream services for consumers. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be working at the intersection of payments and technology.
Ahead of announcements related to our partnership with Telefónica Digital, we’re not able to offer specifics on the reach of resulting products or services but in general, we’re focused on offering a wide range of mainstream payments services across to our members and their customers.
What other strategic partnerships should we expect from Visa in the near future?
Partnerships with key players from across the ecosystem are at the centre of our strategy to bring more convenient, secure and flexible services to market. In addition to Telefónica Digital, we’re also working with companies such as Vodafone, Samsung and Google on areas ranging from digital wallets to NFC payments.
Mary Carol Harris
Vice President and Head of Mobile, Visa Europe
Mary Carol has been with Visa since early February 2008 and joined to lead Visa’s mobile product and business development. Her role at Visa focuses on how mobile cuts across the business to drive one of Visa’s key strategic objectives – mobile payment development. She joined Visa from O2 UK, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Telefonica Group. At O2 UK, where she was responsible for Near Field Communications. Prior to that, she was Head of Marketing at Upaid, a small start up company based in London and Paris that worked with banks and operators across Eastern Europe and North Africa to launch some of the early SMS based mobile payments services offered to the market. Before Upaid, she was a broadcast journalist for Vatican Radio in Rome, Italy, where she worked with a team of international journalists to launch the radio’s multi-lingual, French-Italian-English programme for the Great Jubilee Year in 2000.
Mary Carol has over 11 years of experience in delivering early mobile payments solutions to the market. Her focus at Visa is on the partnerships and relationships Visa is building with the wider mobile eco-system to extend electronic payments into the mobile space. Her work in laying the foundations in the market to support commercialization of mobile contactless services has resulted in a pan-European focus for Visa. Mary Carol’s specialty is working with complex value chains and ecosystems where financial and mobile services intersect. She has a particular interest in Near Field Communications and contactless services as well as mobile user interface.
Mary Carol is a graduate of the Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po) after having completed her BA in the United States at the University of the South (Sewanee). She is fluent in French and Italian.
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