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Consumers in Malaysia can buy Near Field Communication-enabled phones from retailers as part of what Visa Inc. calls the first commercial launch of its contactless payWave application on mobile handsets. The application enables consumers to make contactless purchases with their Nokia 6212 "classic" handsets at some 1,800 merchants in Malaysia, Visa says in a statement released Thursday. NFC payments, which card companies, issuers, transit agencies, merchants and others have tested in dozens of projects around the world over the past few years, have yet to see a general global rollout. "We believe that Visa's NFC mobile-payment launch in Malaysia signals a tipping point for the payments industry globally as we move from mobile payment pilots to commercial availability," Elizabeth Buse, global head of product at Visa, says in the statement. Consumers can activate the payWave application through an over-the-air download, Visa says.
