Give them some credit: Visa and Mastercard push forward the mobile commerce revolution

It has been confirmed that the credit card company Visa has formed an alliance of sorts with communications company NeuStar in the hope of offering a platform for mobile payments.

Speculation for what services will be offered through this platform are currently very thin on the ground; however according to a press release, bill payments, money transfers and mobile phone top-ups will all be possible securely by credit card payments on a mobile phone.

The partnership was revealed at the GSMA Mobile Money Summit, this year held in Barcelona and, coincidentally, sponsored by Visa. The summit’s objective: to financially connect the world through mobile.

NeuStar’s financial stability has put any worries of this alliance to rest. The company’s website explains how the business has ‘over $160 million in the bank [and] virtually no debt’, meaning the troubles of past partnerships between giant businesses and smaller businesses cast into the back of the mind.

It appears that the pairing of Visa and NeuStar could be a match made in heaven. Neustar’s telephony expertise predominantly in the Americas has seen the company be the backbone of over twelve billion instant messages sent via mobile every year – with that statistic rising rapidly. Visa of course is the ever-successful credit company with over £1.1 trillion of transactions conducted in 2007 in the European division alone, and that statistic has risen with their growth since.

The existence of a mobile money summit is testimony that the ball is rolling on this venture and Visa is not the first company to put their hat in the ring on mobile money. PayPal, the e-Commerce website owned by eBay, has a very solid presence on the mobile money market currently with a more limited version of their service available on mobile phones and even some iPods – and aims to expand their platform to increase mobile functionality in the very near future.

Additionally, one of the closest rivals to Visa, MasterCard, is already ahead of the game as the company recently launched its MoneySend service to consumer markets in the US and India.

The service allows the transfer of money in text messages, mobile browsers and specialist applications on mobile phones. The aim of the service is to appeal to all who are mobile, most notably those who own smartphones, who can access the MoneySend facility via Internet browsing on their phone. The services in the US and India, which are in association with Obopay and the SBI (State Bank of India) respectively, could be expanding to the UK soon.

The mobile generation of payments is certainly beginning to gain momentum. With a fully-blown annual conference announcing ideas and predictions for the near future and beyond, the next few years are going to be pivotal in how credit cards are used by consumers in the UK and around the world. Just like online banking took over paper banking, it could be said that as the world evolves, banking online at a computer could give way to the convenience of the mobile.