Visa Opens its V.me Wallet to Developers

Thus far, the digital wallet discussion has been dominated by PayPal, Google, Isis and the scores of other payment service providers vying for one niche or another of ecommerce and mobile commerce. Visa’s V.me digital wallet is the first instantiation of an electronic payments and services strategy announced in May. V.me is a digital wallet service for use both online and at the point of sale. Initial functionality will be a one click purchasing scheme that streamlines checkout – no need to enter payment credentials or shipping information. The V.me wallet will support Visa as well as other card brands.

The V.me scheme is now in an invitation-only beta release for developers from financial institutions and merchants to work with.

Visa and its competitors are striving to win the hearts and minds of software developers. Software increasingly mediates the purchasing experience, and these competitors must provide useful, and remunerative, payments services to those developers to gain their affection. Whether developers feel the love or not will have everything to do with Visa’s success.

V.me supports the evolving ways and places people transact. It is different than other offerings because it is not online or point-of-sale. It is online and point-of-sale. Wherever and however people shop, they can take V.me with them – just like consumers have one physical wallet, they will be able to have one digital wallet. And of course, it will provide features beyond payments such as transaction alerts and the ability to receive personalized offers. First up: a streamlined online checkout, so consumers can click to buy with the new V.me acceptance mark instead of entering their account information and shipping addresses every time they want to shop from their smart phone, tablet or computer.

Click here for more: http://blog.visa.com/2011/11/15/v-me-by-visa/