Visa Inc said it has partnered with several leading financial institutions around the world to make its "wave-and-pay with mobile phones" scheme a reality for consumers globally.

BBVA and Cuscal launched new issuer-branded mobile payment applications for mobile devices running on the Android operating system to enable customers to use the new services.

Additionally Banco do Brazil, PNC Bank, NA, and US Bank intend to launch similar capabilities in the near future.

On the new partnership, Sam Shrauger, senior vice president of digital solutions at Visa Inc, said: "2015 is the year in which fast and safe mobile payments based on Visa technology will proliferate across the world."

"We are very proud that Visa’s Digital Solution is now accessible to the broader market to be used across multiple devices and form factors – enabling secure, fast and engaging commerce experiences in any environment," he stated on the sidelines of Mobile World Congress 2015.

To use these new mobile payment services, consumers have to simply download their financial institution’s mobile payment app from the Google Play store. Following a one-time enrollment process, customers of participating financial institutions will be able to pay in-store with their Visa accounts by waving their Android mobile phone in front of a contactless reader.

These capabilities are an integral part of Visa Digital Solutions, a comprehensive suite of offerings that facilitate secure payments across a broad range of Internet-connected devices and wearables, saiod the statement from Visa.

A year ago at Mobile World Congress 2014, Visa had launched the new technology that provides financial institutions, merchants and developers the ability to securely deploy mobile payment apps with Android devices.

Specifically, Visa is offering capabilities that give financial institutions the option to take advantage of Host Card Emulation (HCE), a new feature in the Android mobile operating system that allows any NFC application on an Android device to emulate a smart card.

Today’s announcement is a testament to the flexibility of Visa’s Digital Solutions, which includes Visa’s software development kit (SDK) and the Visa Token Service, an innovative technology that replaces sensitive payment account information found on plastic cards, such as the 16-digit personal account number, expiration date and security code, with a unique series of numbers that can be used for payment without exposing the underlying account details.

Visa Token Service is the foundation for Visa mobile payments through Apple Pay, HCE and other digital payments apps and use cases coming to the market, it added.-TradeArabia News Service