Visa seems to be developing a habit of taking a dig at mobile operators right before their showcase event, the Mobile World Congress, which starts next week in Barcelona.
Last year, it was the announcement that Visa had struck a deal with smartphone giant Samsung Electronics to preload its Visa payWave application on embedded chips in Samsung NFC devices. The deal would enable banks to bypass mobile operators and their NFC SIMs.
This year, Visa has declared strong support for host-card emulation, a technology that enables banks and other issuers to avoid using any of secure element at all in the device. The world No. 1 payments network said it already had initial HCE specifications ready for issuers and their vendors.