UFJ and Visa Announce Mobile JV
UFJ Nicos, the core credit card division of UFJ Mitsubishi Financial Group and Visa International have agreed to offer mobile phone IC payment services. Under the deal announced UFJ will give Visa the right to use it’s “Smart Plus” settlement technology. The two companies will set up a new firm to oversee the service according to the report.
Three seperate camps are now waging campaigns to become the mobile payment standard, UFJ-Visa is now facing-off against the Sumitomo-Mitsui and DoCoMo “iD’ card and Jcb’s QUICPay technology. The systems employeed by these groups are not interoperable leading some anyalsts to wonder if two of the groups will seek to merge.
As of this posting no further details could be found online — Eds