Visa Europe to make it easier for banks to support third-party mobile wallets

Visa Europe has launched its Visa Europe Digital Enablement Programme (VEDEP) in the UK in an effort to simplify the implementation process for banks looking to support third-party mobile wallets. Google is using the platform to launch Android Pay in the UK this week and the technology will be rolled out across Europe in the “coming months”.

VisaVEDEP will provide banks and technology companies with a turnkey framework that incorporates the Visa Europe Payment Tokenization Service (VEPTS), which added support for cloud-based credentials in February this year.

When banks participate in the programme, they automatically have access to any third party wallet provider that is also a VEDEP participant while third-party mobile wallet providers will gain access to more than 3,000 banks.

“This gives all parties faster integration without having to go through complicated bilateral legal agreements, a commercial framework with no fees passing between technology partners and banks, enhanced security and consumer data protection through Visa’s secure tokenization technology, and scale,” Visa Europe says.

A video gives an overview of Visa Europe’s vision of the contactless payment market in the UK as well as an introduction to VEDEP and its support for Android Pay:

“Banks are faced with many challenges today when it comes to keeping up with the accelerated pace of technology,” says Norman Butler, executive director of corporate developers at Visa Europe. “Mobile payments are expected to grow exponentially in the coming years and Android is helping more and more people benefit from the mobile web so we are excited to include them as a launch partner.”

Visa launched the US version of VEDEP in May 2015. The Visa Digital Enablement Program (VDEP) was also used by Google for the launch of Android Pay in the US.

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