News & Views Detail

We all want to see some signs of recovery in the UK economy at least before the new Government double act start cutting everything in sight so it's good to see a variety of initiatives to the fore this month.  Visa is launching a match planner social media application for the World Cup and you can see why when the number of users on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and the more business oriented tools such as LinkedIn and Plaxo total in the hundreds of millions you have to take notice.  Visa is also allegedly working on an iPhone case that enables owners to make contactless payments with the Apple handset.  MasterCard is planning to pilot a miniature card from Gemalto in Singapore that can be attached to mobile phone SIMs to turn handsets (other than just Nokia) into contactless payments devices.

Also whilst more of the UK population is now shopping online we also seem to be taking more cash out than ever before.  A US financial institution has finally got round to issuing an EMV card and when you hear that Google is now getting into mobile payments it's a pretty good sign that this technology is finally looking like it is going to be the next big thing.