Visa acquires Fundamo mobile payments service
Visa is continuing to gain ground in the mobile payments market with the acquisition of Fundamo, a service that is already prevalent in at least 40 developing markets.
Basically, the merger brings together Fundamo's mobile financial services platform for customers with little to no access to a bank account with Visa's global payments network, VisaNet. The gain for Fundamo users would be a higher level of security when making mobile payments, and Visa gets a bigger consumer base abroad.
Additionally, Visa reaffirmed an agreement with Monitise, which offers new services (i.e. mobile payments, person-to-person payments, mobile transaction alerts, etc.) to Visa account holders on mobile phone.
Visa has already announced plans for an NFC-enabled digital wallet service for North America, set to launch this fall. However, it already looks behind in the game considering MasterCard garnered attention for its involvement on Google Wallet. Nevertheless, if Visa gains control of mobile payments abroad (especially in developing countries where these services are becoming the norm), then they could end up with the worldwide lead.
For another look at Visa's mobile payments strategy, check out the following promo video:
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