NFC Times Exclusive Insight – Visa today announced that other leading device manufacturers besides Apple would begin deploying its Visa Token Service this year, to “deliver secure mobile payments through their phones, tablets and other connected devices.”

This could refer to such OEMs as Samsung Electronics, which has been the subject of much speculation that it is preparing to launch a payments platform in response to Apple Pay. Visa today also announced it expected other “technology companies” to support its tokenization service this year and expected a wider deployment of tokenization for both online and face-to-face mobile transactions in 2015 by banks and other financial institutions. 

Visa and the other major U.S.-based payments schemes have used Apple Pay’s high-profile rollout to promote their tokenization services to other potential mobile-payments providers, and Visa’s CEO Charles Scharf said during the first quarter conference call Jan. 29 that he expects to see further tokenization launches in the first half of 2015. That would include launching tokenized payments for browsers in the spring of 2015.