CTIA Day Two Morning Keynote Part 3: John Partridge - President of Visa

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Our third keynote article for today is some highlighted info from keynote speaker John Partridge, the President of Visa. Of course, Mr. Partridge spoke to attendees regarding the growth in mobile as a payment platform. He reiterated the obvious that cash and check usage is continuing to decline, and that Visa will be a big part of the mobile landscape in the future. Here are a few interesting highlights from his talk.

• Apparently, 35% of all consumers are using credit/debit cards exclusively.
• Out of every 100 dollars spent, 22 of those dollars are coming from a plastic card of some kind.
• Visa sees the future as dominated by mobile payment systems, and NFC will become the global standard.

Because of these prognostications, Visa is creating their own mobile payment system that is designed to take things a step further and make things very easy and convenient for the consumer, while maximizing their security. Their system is called "V.me" and it is an e-commerce only system. In some ways it is similar to Paypal, but instead of having to fund a separate account, you link all your Visa accounts and it helps facilitate paying using your Visa credit card on websites and mobile devices using NFC.

Mr. Partridge emphasized that security, reliability and consumer trust will be their primary focus with this payment system, and he believes that "mobile devices could be the end of cash."

Those are strong words, but they do come from someone who might know a thing or two on the subject, so perhaps he is right. Sound off what you think of this possibility.

 

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Cash will never go away because our entire monetary system is based on it. When everything is on paper instead of in hand, you end up with the 'lack of actual money' crisis that tipped us into the recession in the first place.