Chase Visa card holders now have access to the Visa Mobile Android application for T-Mobile’s G1. The application essentially offers three main features: Alerts, Offers, and Locator. Alerts is more or less a security feature. Any time your Visa card is used you’re alerted to the transaction on your G1. The Offers feature alerts you to deals offered by merchants in your vicinity, eliminating the hassle of paper coupons. The Locator feature is pretty interesting. It finds your location using the G1’s GPS and then shows you the location of Visa ATM’s and Visa-accepting merchants within a 25-mile radius. You’re shown the locations on Google Maps and if you click on a location pin you can get turn-by-turn directions. I’m sure you could cross-reference Offers with Locator to find the nearest stores with deals, and then get directions there.
There has been some chatter around the blogosphere regarding the security implications of Visa Mobile. Some point to the danger of managing financial information on your mobile when they’re so often misplaced. Others point to a clause in the Visa Mobile terms that references the lack of 100% security. The first point is valid. That’s one of the reasons that we need to be able to sync mobile with dot-com. If that was the case a person could just head to the nearest computer and disable their phone. The second point is a play on fear I think. No financial transaction is ever completely secure so I think it’s nothing more than a disclaimer by Visa.
It’ll take a while before the mainstream population becomes comfortable with this. Just think back to the first days of e-commerce–everyone was blown away by the fact that online retailers wanted you to send your credit card information into cyberspace. I don’t think many of us even think about it now. Eventually mobile will head in this direction, especially once we can actually pay for things with our phones.
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