MasterCard has been hard at work trying to re-imagine the way we pay for things for a long time now. By providing the latest gadget that allows you to quickly pay for something, MasterCard has always been a step above the rest here in the US. Unfortunately, NFC-style payments are only just starting to catch on, and right now everyone is fighting for the right to be the brand you use to tap-and-pay.
In an attempt to bolster their already well known Paypass system, MasterCard seeks to create a payment ecosystem in which you use only them. MasterCard wants to make Paypass the payment solution you use to click, touch, and tap to buy things.
Tap to Pay
NFC payments are, in my opinion, incredibly useful. Unfortunately, the availability right now is basically nonexistent unless you have the right device on the right carrier. Google Wallet is trying to win the hearts and minds of the mobile purchaser, but is unable to get past these hurdles with the carriers. As a result, there are many NFC-enabled devices that do not have Google Wallet on them, so the mobile payment opportunity is lost.
MasterCard is a primary backer in Google’s Wallet plan, but as it becomes clear that the issues with the carriers isn’t going to be resolved anytime soon, they acted on their own. MasterCard intends to release a PayPass app that functions in much the same way as Google Wallet, but include support for up to 25 different cards in the Paypass Wallet. If you have a card or a banking service that supports payment via NFC, you will be able to tap your NFC phone to a Paypass pad and complete the transaction.
In the demonstrations of the software, MasterCard showed off a new kind of turnstyle that allowed you to simply tap your phone to the column and then allow you to pass through, as you would with a train or subway. Before implementations like this, MasterCard is laser-focused on putting Paypass receivers on as many brick-and-mortar style payment systems possible in order to encourage users to pull out their phone when available to complete the purchase.
Click to Pay
MasterCard has realized that the world is not going to dive head first into NFC. Even when they get a phone that supports it, some people just plain won’t use it. After all, their real wallet works just fine, or maybe they do most of their shopping online anyway. Web-based shopping isn’t something that is really feared anymore. Many users, just like with brink-and-mortar stores, pick their shopping outlets and tend to buy from just those places. Others will shop whichever site has the thing that caught their eye.
MasterCard has released APIs to allow for websites to include a “Pay with Paypass” button on their website. If you choose to pay this way, when you click the button you are prompted to login and are presented with up to 25 credit cards in your digital wallet. Pick the card you want to pay with, and complete the transaction. If you need to have that item you just bought shipped to your house, Paypass stores multiple addresses that it will auto-populate the shipping form with.
Everything about this addition to Paypass points a crosshair on other similar services. Both Paypal and Google Wallet are widely accepted forms of payment across the web, enabling users to rapidly pay for all kind of goods and services. Paypass, however, offers the service s a seamless add on to their NFC payment app. The two will function as a single service, which is something neither Paypal nor Google have managed to pull off yet. For example, Google’s Checkout service and Google Wallet aren’t connected in any way, the two services don’t even share a transaction history.
Touch to Pay
Part of the APIs that MasterCard is releasing for the web-based Paypass purchasing system include simple large buttons for transactions in a mobile environment. The web app for MasterCard Paypass is designed to offer the same usability that you see with a phone app for completing a transaction. The large buttons, clear text, and scalable graphics mean the purchasing gateway looks and functions nicely on any phone or tablet.The Paypass wallet service makes it so you don’t need to enter in a credit card number or shipping address, as it will pull that information straight from your account.
While this feels very much like a value add and not a separate feature right now, the possibility for it to be more is certainly there. It wasn’t that long ago there were companies trying desperately to avoid paying Apple’s rates for in-app purchases or digital subscriptions. The attempted resolution for many companies was to bring the user to a website to pay for the service. Paypass mobile APIs would make this kind of activity far simpler for a small company to implement on their apps to avoid the in-app purchasing systems.
Final Thoughts
This is a bold move for MasterCard. Be entering the word on web payment, they introduce a new competitor into the arena, which will force the existing companies to innovate and create new features for web purchasing. Ultimately, whether or not MasterCard is successful here comes entirely from adoption. Customers, vendors, web developers, and even financial institutions need to support MasterCard in this venture in order for it to work out in their favor. MasterCard says that the volume of organizations implementing Paypass in their businesses has doubled year over year. The desire is there, but MasterCard will now need to heavily promote this new service to get it off the ground.
