V.me available across the UK to any cardholding consumer – banks and retailers will roll out the service nationally from June

Visa Europe confirmed that it has secured commitment from 55% of the UK’s issuance base, which accounts for more than 60 million card holders, and thousands of the UK’s retailers, large and small, to commercially rollout V.me by Visa at scale in the UK this year. The service was initially launched by Visa with Nationwide Building Society, and this announcement means that the service will now be commercially available to the majority of internet shoppers in the UK before the end of 2015.

According to the Visa Europe representatives, the service is expecting to be launched this year on the Romanian market also.

V.me is part of Visa Europe’s growing portfolio of products enabling frictionless commerce for retailers and consumers. Offering simple, secure online payments, V.me by Visa is designed to increase the convenience of online shopping, reducing the proportion of sales that are abandoned during the checkout process, currently estimated to be over 68%. This value is an average value from 29 different studies containing statistics on e-commerce shopping cart abandonment.

Wendy Martin, executive director, V.me by Visa, commented:
“We’re extremely proud to announce the commercial launch and widespread availability of V.me by Visa in the UK. A recent study by Accenture found that almost half of consumers surveyed plan to increase the number of their online purchases in the future, so we think that the V.me digital payment service is as important for the online environment as contactless is in the face-to-face environment. The uptake of the service by retailers and banks across the country will further enable frictionless commerce, making online shopping – particularly checking out – easier, quicker and safer for the consumer, reducing the abandonment rate for merchants.”

Kevin Jenkins, managing director UK & Ireland at Visa Europe commented:
“The UK is the European leader of online commerce with a valuable and diverse range of companies that conduct business online. This announcement is a further proof point of our ability to innovate, building on our market success in contactless. We’re excited to be working with our member banks and many of the UK’s leading retailers to do this and look forward to new partners coming on board.”

When shopping online, consumers can access their V.me service online from whichever device they prefer, including tablet and smartphone, so they can shop anywhere, anytime, without having to enter sensitive card details in public. V.me by Visa can store multiple payment cards and every purchase is secured in just a few clicks.

About V.me by Visa
V.me by Visa is a service that allows you to securely save all your debit, credit and pre-paid card details online. It saves you time and effort when you shop online because, instead of manually entering your card details when you checkout, you simply log into your digital wallet with your email address and password. Plus it’s a safe way to make online payments as paying with V.me by Visa shields your full card details from the website you’re making a payment to.