Things are heating up a little in Barcelona as VISA teams up with Neustar with a QR Code conceptualized promotion. Neustar is a company that deals with voice, data and video transfer. In short, telecommunications. Well, we all know what VISA stands for.

Anyway, it seems that VISA and Neustar launched a promotion during the Mobile World Congress. The duo offers attendees of the congress the chance to win VISA gift cards whenever they downloaded a free mobile phone QR Code reader to their smart phones and scanned a code with it on the spot. Despite the rising awareness of the many advantages of QR Codes, Neustar never really got a handle of promoting their services (individually or co-promotions with others) with QR Codes. This is purely, we speculate, because of the fact that not a lot of people knew about QR Codes. Now, along with a rise in iPhone and Blackberry phone users comes peaked awareness.

With the promotion, Neustar is trying their hardest to push their new service called the Mobile Barcode Clearinghouse Service which interconnect mobile operators, advertising agencies and makers of cell phone applications. There is no word about how it is all going to work out and how the system is going to work but it seems that the company is already busy coaxing big brand names to participate in their pilot project.

The Senior Vice President of Neustar, Steve Edwards, admits that the project is currently only at its infancy stage and the pace of things will pick up as we near the end of 2010. As such, the project is deemed a fragmented one. However, if everyone hopped on to the project and understand the functionality and operatibility of the service, everyone would want a piece of the pie.

During the congress, participants can download an absolutely free QR Code reader application which can be used, on the spot, to scan a promotional QR Code provided by VISA. They are then required to answer a simple question and they stand a chance to win a VISA gift card. The organizers even took to heart that not many people own a smart phone, so, for those who are interested but do not yet own a smart phone, they can join the contest in a booth at the venue.