MasterCard is plugging away at boosting its efforts in the mobile payments space with a commercial and strategic investment in mFoundry, a mobile solutions provider for banks, credit unions, and retailers.
The partnership will see the integration of MasterCard’s existing PayPass tap-to-pay technology with mFoundry’s mobile financial services platform. Thus, customers of these financial institutions will be able to use the mobile payments platform through the banks they already use.
The key motivation here, according to MasterCard, is ensuring the availability of choices for consumers, whether it be when it comes to handsets, digital wallet apps, and even the bank providing the service.
With this latest move, MasterCard has already demonstrated that it is making itself available for multiple digital wallet platforms. The credit card provider has already signed on to support the Isis platform as well as Google Wallet.
Stressing the importance of choice on MasterCard’s part represents a budding theme in the mobile payments world that there can be many different, successfully competing forms of digital wallets, whether it be via NFC technology, mobile apps from PayPal or even Starbucks, as well as external modules like those from Square.
However, time will tell which mediums will prove most beneficial to and successful with consumers.
