Visa becomes another force to reckon with in the e-commerce world as it launches its new digital wallet. The new digital wallet is an e-commerce solution pioneered by Visa to allow consumers to pay for goods and services with just a click on their smartphones. With Visa set to launch another promising e-commerce solution, the world of digital and mobile payments has just gotten bigger.
Michelle Heng of Zippycart.com also reports that Visa launching the new digital wallet should be no surprise as the payments technology company has recently acquired two monetizing solutions aimed to make consumer shopping seamless and hassle-free. The combined purchase of the $190 million worth PlaySpan and CyberSource in 2010 has made Visa a powerful force in the already expanding e-commerce and m-commerce market.
PlaySpan was purchased by Visa in February of this year, paid for in cash for a whopping $190 million, excluding bonuses for performance milestones. The company specializes in ecommerce monetizing solutions for online games, making partnerships with various social networks and gaming companies such as Facebook, Ubisoft, Sanrio, and Disney.
CyberSource, on the other hand, was purchased a year earlier for a huge sum of $2 billion. The e-payment company operates on a global scale, providing services to simplify and automate payment operations. Customers will find the e-payment platform familiar, seeing the CyberSource and Authorize.Net options as a means to pay online simply and securely, minimizing the risk of fraud.
With the combined purchase of PlaySpan and CyberSource, Visa’s new digital wallet is expected to make consumer e-commerce shopping more convenient, offering more choices with greater control. Joseph W. Saunders who is the Chairman and CEO of Visa, Inc. also states that merchants can greatly benefit from Visa’s digital wallet as it helps curb abandoned online shopping carts while bringing new clients at the same time. This, he boasts, is actually a win-win-win situation for merchants, consumers, and financial institutions.
The digital wallet will make online payments easier by linking and consolidating both Visa and non-Visa cards and accounts for online and mobile ecommerce transactions via a “click-to-buy” option. Consumers will also save more time as the digital wallet can securely store credit card information such as the number, expiration date, and billing information so purchasing becomes more convenient as there is no need to enter the same information each time.
Expect to hear more about the launch of Visa’s digital wallet in the fall of 2011 when it is released in the US and Canada markets.
