May 7, 2012

MasterCard Introduces the PayPass

In an early post, we introduced PayPal's payment innovation and the Google Wallet, but now MasterCard is quickly following in their footsteps.  Today, MasterCard introduced their PayPass Service, which has three components: the PayPass Acceptance Network, PayPass Wallet, and the PayPass API.  These three components combined help streamline your shopping experience - making the process quick and easy.  
“We think of MasterCard’s mission as using technology to make payments safer, simpler, smarter and this is just one of the ways we’re progressing against that mission” Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments office, MasterCard told Mashable.

The PayPass Acceptance Network: includes both online and contactless payments.  This enables retailers to obtain your payment information, much like Amazon's autofill features, so that you can quickly pay.  You don't have to enter your information every time you shop.

The PayPass Wallet: this allows banks, merchants, and partners to label their wallets and save all of their information in one place.  You can even save information from Visa, American Express, and many others.

The PayPass API: allows PayPass partners to connect their wallets to the PayPass Network.  This enables fraud protection and a simple authentication process to streamline the checkout process.

It seems that mobile technology is taking over almost every part of the shopping experience - both online and offline.  More consumers are making their purchases online through a website or their mobile phone.  With new payment options, the overall shopping experience is now much easier and quicker.  Customers are spending less time shopping in a face-to-face setting and spending more time quickly shopping online and paying through PayPal.  But with the introduction of the Google Wallet and with MasterCard's PayPass service, will customers begin to miss the face-to-face interaction that shopping provides? Will consumers abandon retail stores and shopping centers all together?  Let us know your thoughts!

No comments:

Post a Comment