Thursday, October 13, 2011

Mastercard making mobile payment waves

It is clear that MasterCard have taken mobile payments seriously, if the number of initiatives announced during the past period is an indication. As one of the big card payment providers and a major player in payments in mature economies, this is further ratification of the importance of this industry for emerging markets.

Some of the announcements that I picked up on lately are the following:
  • Launching NFC based payments in conjunction with RIM's Blackberry and Etisalat in the UAE (Read here)
  • Utilising Intel two-factor authentication in conjunction with Symantec to bring more secure mobile payments to market (Read here)
  • Talks about launching a MasterCard mobile payment gateway in Indonesia (Read here)
  • Making key appointments in Nigeria (some with prior mobile telecommunications experience (Read here)
  • Launching a online payment model utilising mobile phones in conjunction with Airtel and Standard Chartered (Read here)
  • Application to link a MasterCard number to a mobile phone to perform mCommerce transactions in Hungary with a number of telco's (Read here)

No comments: