Japanese card issuer JCB is to share Visa Asia Pacific's contactless specification in a bid to increase acceptance of its J/Speedy contactless cards at merchant locations outside of Japan.
The Japanese firm says a common specification will enable merchants to use the same terminal to accept contactless payments for both brands.
Rahul Khosla, general manager, products, Visa Asia Pacific, says the deal will enable merchants to minimise 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 programmes," adds Khosla.
JCB said last year that it would share a common contactless communications protocol based on MasterCard's PayPass ISO/IEC14443 implementation specification. Visa agreed to support the Mastercard PayPass ISO/IEC14443 protocol in March 2005.
In September 2005 the Japanese card issuer joined an initiative from Visa and MasterCard to align security requirements, testing methodologies and approval procedures for PIN Entry Devices (PED).