Some high profile partnership deals have
been announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Among them is
the deal between Ericsson and MTN.

African telco MTN will become the first
operator to deploy the Ericsson Converged Wallet platform across
Africa and the Middle East.

Ericsson President and CEO Hans Vestberg
said that MTN has long been an early adopter in mobile money.

He said: “Driving accelerated time to
market for operators and linking wallet accounts to purchases
across multiple payment systems is a clear next step in next
generation mobile financial services.”

Christian de Faria, MTN’s group chief
commercial officer commented that optimising the mobile money
consumer experience would bring a direct impact on consumer’s
loyalty.

 

Tandem Intel-Visa

Intel announced different partnerships at
the WMC aimed at the mobile device market, among others with
Orange, ZTE and Lava International.

Visa’s President John Partridge said that
there is a multi-year strategic alliance between both companies in
place.

The first step of the alliance involves the
certification of Intel’s Smartphone Reference Device (powered by
the Atom processor Z2460).

This allows the use of Visa’s mobile
payment technology payWave. Visa hopes the deal will make it easier
for original equipment manufacturers of NFC-enabled smart phones to
support its payWave technology.