Sprint, Visa to jointly market m-commerce opportunities
Visa and Sprint's shared vision is to offer consumers the convenience to conduct transactions securely at anytime, from anywhere.
Visa U.S.A. and Sprint plan to develop joint consumer promotions at Sprint Store retail locations, online through sprintpcs.com and on Visa's web site (www.visa.com). Sprint will be able to target more than 344 million U.S. Visa cardholders through promotions via Visa's Member financial institutions.
The Visa/Sprint relationship will lead to new opportunities which will allow consumers to purchase goods and services over the Sprint PCS nationwide wireless network. To achieve this goal, Visa and Sprint will work closely to ensure the security of payments and purchases made on Sprint PCS' wireless network.
Currently Sprint customers have the option of paying their monthly phone service with a Visa card on an ongoing basis. While this option provides customers with payment convenience and flexibility, it also ensures Sprint on-time receipt of payment, increased customer loyalty and potential for increased revenues.
Visa, a company at the forefront of payment security, has introduced several key initiatives as part of its Visa Secure Commerce Program to protect its cardholders and merchants from payment card fraud online. One recent example is the Visa Payer Authentication Service, based on 3-D Secure Interoperability Standard. The new service has been designed to reduce the risk of unauthorized use of a cardholder account and make Internet shopping better and safer for both buyers and sellers on the Web. This service enables card Issuers to verify a cardholder's identity through the use of a password and provides results to the merchant in real time during the checkout process. In a move to heighten consumer confidence in making purchases on mobile devices, Visa is working to extend this new security specification into the mobile channel - ensuring that cardholder data sent over open networks remains secure.
"Forty years ago Visa helped create the payments industry and, today, we're pleased to be working with strategic partners such as Sprint to recreate the industry. By combining the strength of the Visa and Sprint brands and bringing new technologies to market, we're offering consumers convenient, new ways to pay for goods and services," says Armen Khachadourian, SVP New Market Development, Visa U.S.A. "Visa is already the preferred way to pay on the Internet. Our goal is to build upon consumers' trust in the Visa brand so that they feel comfortable and secure making purchases in new payment channels."
"Sprint PCS is excited about this opportunity to work with Visa in providing our customers secure and convenient new ways to conduct transactions over the Wireless Web," said Bill Blessing, vice president of Sprint PCS Business Development and Strategic Planning.
About Visa U.S.A.
Visa is the world's leading payment brand and largest payment system, enabling banks to provide their consumer and merchant customers with the best way to pay and be paid. More than 14,000 U.S. financial institutions rely on Visa's processing system, VisaNet, to facilitate over $765 billion in annual transaction volume—including more than half of all Internet payments—with virtually 100 percent reliability. U.S. consumers carry more than 345 million Visa-branded smart, credit, commercial, stored value and check cards, accepted at approximately 21 million locations worldwide. Visa has long led the industry in developing payment security standards, and has been named the most trusted payment brand online. Visa's people, partnerships, brand and payment technology are helping to create universal commerce—the ability to safely conduct transactions anytime, anywhere and by any device. Please visit www.visa.com for additional information.
About Sprint
Sprint is a world-class global communications company - at the forefront of integrating wireline and wireless communications services. Sprint is a large carrier of Internet traffic and a leader in broadband communications. The company built and operates the United States' first nationwide all-digital, fiber-optic network and provides a portfolio of advanced data communications services. It operates the largest 100-percent digital, 100-percent nationwide PCS wireless network in the United States, already serving the majority of the nation's metropolitan areas including more than 4,000 cities and communities across the country. Sprint has $23 billion in annual revenues and serves more than 23 million business and residential customers.
Source: Visa U.S.A.
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