“…IDEMIA technology is playing a vital role in the process of converting real payment cards into virtual Google Pay payment cards, not just for JCB but also its issuing and processing partners.”

IDEMIA is going to help deliver Google’s mobile payments platform to Japan in collaboration with JCB, the company has announced.

The Google Pay support was first announced earlier this year, with JCB proclaiming that its customers would be able to link their JCB debit and credit cards to the Google Pay app in their smartphones. Now, IDEMIA has revealed that its Digital Enablement Platform is being used to support JCB’s payment card tokenization and digitization system. That essentially means that IDEMIA technology is playing a vital role in the process of converting real payment cards into virtual Google Pay payment cards, not just for JCB but also its issuing and processing partners.

In a statement announcing the collaboration, IDEMIA Japan representative director Nobuyoshi Nezu said it “represents another milestone in our long-term partnership,” adding that “IDEMIA is the mobile payment enablement partner of choice for JCB”.

For its part, JCB’s EVP of Brand Business, Masaki Yokawa, applauded IDEMIA’s “proven track record in this area,” and said that JCB expects that the Google Pay support “will enhance the convenience and experience for JCB card members with the simple and intuitive user interface.”

It still isn’t clear when exactly JCB’s support for Google Pay will be officially launched, with the companies’ statement indicating that it’s still in the works. But they do appear very close, and that’s good news for JCB’s customers and for Google as well, as support for its mobile payments platform continues to spread.