NEW ORLEANS - Technology conferences are a favorite venue for wild-eyed predictions from self-anointed futurists, and certainly this week's CTIA Wireless 2012 event is no different.

But on the subject of mobile commerce, a hot topic here at the show, Visa President John Partridge tempered his enthusiasm with a measure of realism, acknowledging that it is premature to brand this year or next the "breakthrough" year for making payments on wireless devices.

"Quite the contrary," Partridge said in a keynote address on Wednesday. "Clearly there is great momentum surrounding mobile payments today, but we are still in the very early stages of deployment."

At the same time, Visa and other financial services companies have been moving aggressively to develop their own mobile payment services. Visa's is called V.me, which the firm just debuted with a beta launch this week after having offered a preview several months ago.