Usingcell phones to pay bills could mean trouble for traditional credit cardcompanies such as MasterCard and Visa, but it is a potential gold mine for First Data, the payment-processing giant that handles payments from both.

Several news outlets reported that a consortium of cell phone carriersis readying a system whereby people could use their cell phones as credit cards. Longtime rivals, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are teaming up with financial services firms Barclays and Discover to createa smartphone-based payment system.

This system, which is already popular in many Asian countries, woulduse a near field communications chip embedded in the cell phone to process the payments. Eventually, it could replace plastic credit cardsaltogether.

A company like First Data, which does the payment processing for countless global retail transactions, would be one of the essential elements.