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MasterCard Aims To Enable Payments via Any Gadget

The Toronto-based company over the summer announced what it called the world’s first biometrically authenticated, wearable credit card payment using one’s heartbeat.

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To get people excited about the possibilities, it has rounded up a bunch of partners from multiple industries to illustrate how it can be done, and is showcasing them at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas.

As the market for the Internet of Things and wearables continues to take shape worldwide, MasterCard wants to be at this shift’s forefront – and is giving companies the ability to add payment credentials to devices such as automobile key fobs, smart rings and even clothing, through a program that is an extension of its digital enablement service.

“We’re very bullish about the trend and what we’re seeing in adoption”, Anderson said, noting that meaningful things happen in the payments space in a short time span. Although the exact number of stores that support NFC mobile payments is unknown, Apple boasted in March that 700,000 USA stores support Apple Pay, which is powered by NFC, and that number has grown since.

“We’ve talked about every device being a commerce device or a payments device for a little while and we had a vision around that”, said James Anderson, group head and senior vice president for mobile and emerging payments at MasterCard in an interview with ARC. Now it’s partnering with General Motors and wearables startups to allow their devices to make payments.

Credit card company MasterCard is working with several firms to bring mobile payments to just about every product you own. The new technology uses tokenization and all transactions are encrypted. According to Cisco, there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020.

“The goal is for the transition to digital to be more secure than plastic cards”, Haymond said. The program gives consumers the freedom to shop using the device or thing that is most convenient to them, with the highest level of security available. MasterCard is establishing this new program as the foundation to enable payments for IoT. MasterCard provides tokenization and digital enablement services to Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay. GM has made a key fob with MasterCard’s wireless payments tech built in; Ringly has done the same with a version of its smart ring; andNymi has created a smart wristband.

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MasterCard is quick to point out that these prototypes are just the beginning.

MasterCard Launches New Program That Can Turn Any Consumer Gadget, Accessory