Visa to Expand its Visa Ready Program to IoT Devices

Imagine ordering groceries directly from your smart refrigerator or paying for gas from the comfort of your connected car.

Visa announced today that it will expand its Visa Ready program to IoT companies, enabling automobiles, wearables, public transportation systems, clothing and virtually any connected IoT device to accept secure payments.

“More and more, consumers are relying on smart appliances and connected devices to make their lives easier,” said Jim McCarthy, executive vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships at Visa Inc. in a post on their website, “By adding payments to these devices, we are turning virtually any Internet connection into a commerce experience – making secure payments seamless, and ultimately more accessible, to merchants and consumers.”

 According to a report from Gartner, up to 6.4 billion devices will make up the IoT this year, a 30 percent increase from last year. It’s estimated 5.5. million new devices will get connected each day in 2016 and that by 2020 there will be over 20 billion devices connected.

A recent McKinsey Institute study revealed that the IoT has a “total potential economic impact of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025. At the top end, that level of value—including the consumer surplus—would be equivalent to about 11 percent of the world economy.”

Accenture, Coin, Giesecke & Devrient, Fit Pay, and Samsung are the first companies to partner with the new program expansion, and for now Visa will focus on companies that manufacture wearables and connected cars. Companies will have access to the Visa Token Service, which allows secure mobile payments wherever there is an Internet connection. It will also allow IoT companies to research and evaluate potential new Visa-approved payment methods.

In October 2015, Visa’s top competitor MasterCard also entered the IoT space, announcing a secure payment program aimed at wearables.

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