Rahul Khosla, general manager Products, Visa Asia Pacific said, "JCB's adoption of Visa's contactless specification moves the whole payment industry closer to a single interoperable platform that works for all brands. As a result of this agreement, merchants accepting Visa and JCB contactless cards will soon be able to minimize their investment in terminals. Vendors will be able to lower their production costs, speed up time to market and thus accelerate the pace at which the industry can implement interoperable contactless payment programs. Ultimately, consumers and merchants will benefit from faster and more convenient payment. Our research confirms that this is exactly what they want."
Tac Watanabe, senior vice president of Global Infrastructure & Technologies at JCB said that this is an important phase for JCB in rolling out an international EMV-based contactless solution for their cardholders and merchants. "The agreement will provide new opportunities for the two payment systems to expand contactless merchant acceptance further and to increase the number of outlets where cardholders can use both Visa and JCB contactless cards. We strongly believe that this arrangement will also lead to more cost-effective and easier implementation of contactless payments for our issuers and acquirers."
Contactless cards are a major achievement in chip innovation as they do not need to be swiped or inserted into point-of-sale terminals. Payments are made using Radio Frequency-equipped smart cards by simply holding the card about four centimeters from the payment reader. The close range and EMV-based security technology used in Visa contactless card payments ensure that transactions are secure. Additional security features, which are based on industry-wide global standards, are built into point-of-sale terminals that will accept both Visa and JCB contactless cards.
Taiwan, where the Visa Wave contactless card is accepted at merchants such as Watsons, Blockbuster, RT-Mart, Taipei 101 and Breeze malls, will be the first market in Asia to start accepting both Visa Wave and J/Speedy at the same point-of-sale terminals. Watsons reported that customers paying with Visa Wave take just four to six seconds per transaction - compared with up to 35 seconds with magnetic stripe cards. The average queuing time for customers in Watsons is shorter by 77 percent, resulting in higher turnover at the point of sale. Since payment using Visa Wave is faster and more convenient, customers tend to purchase more in a single transaction - the average transaction value at Watsons being 2.3 times higher on Visa Wave than cash purchases.
J/Speedy is JCB's global standards-based (ISO 14443) contactless payment solution, which has been developed in recognition of the need for globally interoperable contactless payment services for merchants and consumers.
For the Japan market only, Visa and JCB have respectively introduced Visa Touch and QUICPay(TM) contactless payment programs based on Sony's FeliCa(R) standard, which is widely employed for contactless card, mobile and public transportation payments.
