MasterCard launches MasterPass: Will this digital wallet fly?
MasterCard on Monday launched MasterPass, the next generation of its PayPass e-commerce wallet.
The announcement, made at the Mobile World Congress powwow in Barcelona, comes as MasterCard's PayPass had only 13 percent awareness among U.S. consumers, according to comScore. PayPal had the most awareness followed by Google Wallet.
MasterPass will launch at the end of March in Australia and Canada followed by the U.S. and U.K. MasterCard also said that MasterPass will roll out in Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain and Sweden in 2013.
The digital wallet service consists of the following:
- Checkout services to accept electronic payments from multiple locations. MasterPass will support NFC, QR codes, tags and mobile devices at the point of sale.
- Connected wallets so banks, merchants and partners can offer their own branded wallets. These wallets will include cards other than MasterCard.
- "Value added services" to provide information during shopping.
Needless, to say MasterCard has a full roster of merchants and financial institutions supporting MasterPass.
The big question remains whether MasterPass will manage to gain traction among shoppers, who know of digital wallets but aren't exactly clamoring for them.
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