If there are merchants and banks in your country, chances are MasterCard's trying to develop mobile point of sale payments. Ed McGlaughlin, chief of emerging payments for MasterCard, recently discussed how the card firm is lining up local partners and its own innovation lab to sell contactless transactions.
What are some of the major mobile initiatives that are underway or planned at MasterCard?
McLaughlin: There are a number of initiatives going on globally. We're working with Singtel to grow mobile payments in Asia; another project with Orange and Barclaycard UK to launch a contactless credit card that's part of an evolution toward full mobile payments; a payments product with airtell Africa and Standard Chartered Bank to launch virtual card that operates off of a 'wallet' residing on the mobile phone; a joint venture with Telefonica that covers Latin America, which is a partnership in which a new firm will be created to focus on integrating mobile capabilities with financial services that will work with existing electronic payment systems; the launch of Micro SD cards in the U.S. [Micro SD, or "secure data" technology, enables smartphones to be used as payment devices in stores]; as well as other projects.
How do you navigate the challenges of implementing payment initiatives in a wide range of regions?
A lot of our ability to do this ties into the core MasterCard network. Any change that we make to the network or anything that we can add is available to all regions of the world...the work that we've done with airtell Africa, for example, is something that any mobile [finance operation] can take advantage of. To ensure that what we're offering is right for a specific locale, we also have a team that works closely with banks and telcos in the area.
How has the underlying technology improved to encourage more mobile payments?
We've developed PayPass into the mobile market [which uses RFID, considered a key technology for the development of mobile POS payments], and one of the purposes of that was to be able to deliver more services in the future on handsets. The key was to have the infrastructure in place already, so now as we're looking to bring POS payments to the phone, it's building on work that we've done before. Also, through our inControl platform [which enables user-provided settings for card activity], we can enable mobile shopping, or using the phone similar to a browser to view purchases.
How will Apple's recent expansion into contactless payments impact the market?
The latest news around NFC technology continues to show the progress that is being made to enable mobile contactless payments around the world-which MasterCard helped start in 2003. We will continue to look for opportunities to work together with other leading organizations that also aim to make mobile payments a reality for consumers everywhere. MasterCard brings a special advantage to any entity wanting to develop real mobile payment solutions. We operate the world's fastest payment processing network, which is crucially important because we can help ensure that the handling and processing of mobile payments is always secure and consistent.
