Your mobile phone can also be a credit card

ISTANBUL - Imagine swiping a mobile phone to pay for all the things that you buy! This has just been made possible by latest technology that allows bank information to be stored in your mobile phones’ memory cards.

Global credit card giant Visa has entered a partnership with a Turkish bank to launch this technology, the first of its kind in Europe.

This technology is used to store bank information in memory cards placed in mobile phones and allow them to be waved in front of credit card payment points, Visa Europe, which has collaborated with Turkey’s Akbank, said.

The same technology which allows a credit card to be swiped in a special reader is being used in this latest cellphone technique, it said.

The memory cards which bring Visa’s new “payWave” technology to any phone with a memory card slot, have been developed by a company named DeviceFidelity, Xinhua reported.

In future, this technology will also allow transfer of money between individuals, Mary Carol Garris, head of Visa Europe’s mobile technologies department, said.

Visa Europe’s regional director Berna Ulman said Turkey was Europe’s innovation centre for credit card technologies, saying, “the many firsts in Turkey have provided direction for the rest of Europe”.

With 30,000 of these payment devices launched in Turkey, the country was at the forefront of such technology in Europe.

For security reasons, purchases over 35 Turkish lira will require a pin number, but everything under that can be swiped directly, she said.

Turkey has 85 million cellphone subscribers. It is ranked second in Europe for credit card use, Hakan Binbasgil, deputy chairman of Akbank, said.