Samsung and Visa team up for mobile NFC payments

Samsung and Visa have formed a partnership to provide mobile payments in time for the 2012 London Olympic games.

An Olympic-branded mobile handset will allow purchases under the value of £15 to be made using near-field communication (NFC) technology and the 60,000 contactless payment readers throughout London retailers.

UK mobile network operators will sell the Samsung and Visa device, which only works with a Visa-enabled SIM card.

"Visa is working with banks and retailers worldwide to roll-out acceptance for Visa contactless cards, as well as mobile phones, as part of an industry wide roll-out of contactless technology," said Visa in a statement.

"To make payments, customers simply select the Visa mobile contactless application, select pay and hold the phone in front of a contactless reader at the point of purchase," the company added.

"This mobile payment device will be available in the UK initially, and we plan to expand the service to other countries in Europe and around the world where contactless payment facilities are available in the near future," said Seokpil Kim, CEO of Samsung Electronics Europe.

Samsung unveiled a NFC-enabled bada smartphone device at the Mobile World Congress 2011.

Visa recently rolled out a service that will enable its customers to transfer money using e-mail, phone or visa account numbers.