Over the weekend, Toronto welcomed the excitement and glamour of the world renowned Toronto International Film
Festival (TIFF). This year, we were thrilled to announce our sponsorship renewal for another five years through 2021, which gives us exclusive theatre branding rights for the newly relocated Visa Screening Room at the Princess of Wales Theatre. We were also excited to start a new collaboration for 2017 with The IMDb Studio, which produced exclusive interviews with celebrities at the Visa Infinite Lounge during TIFF’s opening weekend.
Visa continually innovates by enhancing its products, systems and services, and by bringing the benefits of electronic payments to more people in more places. Each year at TIFF is an opportunity for Visa to showcase Visa innovations and demonstrate our position as a leader in payment technology right in the heart of the festival, on David Pecaut Square. This year, we are featuring Visa innovations in contactless payments using multi-form factor including mobile and wearable technology. Each consumer will experience a mobile payment demo that will light up with each ‘purchase’ and select consumers will receive surprise and delight items.
The continuous rise in mobile connectivity has led to the proliferation of digital payments and Canadians are among the biggest users in the world, enthusiastically embracing their phones as payment devices. It’s not surprising considering that Canada has a very high penetration of smartphone usage with more than 80 per cent of Canadians owning a smartphonei. We also have one of the highest penetrations of card-based payments in the world – more than 70 per cent of personal purchases in Canada are card-basedii. Combine that with the fact that contactless payments are widely accepted in Canada – there are 27 Visa payWave transactions happening every second in Canada, and it’s easy to see that Canada is poised to embrace cashlessiii. In fact, 12 per cent of Canadian smartphone owners are already using their phones to make an NFC payment. When you add mobile-based payments with In-App purchases, that number jumps to 47 per centiv.
From an innovation perspective, payments will be at the core of this new commerce experience. There are countless opportunities in the growth of Internet of Things to make payments even more immediate and convenient for consumers with connected devices. Just last month, Visa announced we are enabling payments on the new Fitbit and Garmin fitness trackers, moving us even closer to a cashless future. There are many more opportunities across wearables, automotive, home, retail and cities that will change the way people pay for things very quickly.
We know that commerce is changing and as new technology continues to evolve and be adopted at a rapid pace, Visa is preparing for a future that looks very different from today.
i comScore – Mobile Wallet and Transactions 2017
ii Euromonitor – Merchant Segment Study
iiiVisaNet data, domestic, face to face transactions
iv Visa Canada Digital Commerce Index 2017
