Tag: mastercard

Mastercard Starts Testing Credit Cards With Fingerprint Sensors In South Africa

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Mastercard is testing a new kind of payment cards integrated with fingerprint sensors for authentication. Instead of putting in your PIN or hastily signing the receipts to complete purchases, you simply press your thumb on the card to prove the transaction. Mastercard is currently testing this new biometric card in South Africa, and plans to roll it out worldwide later this year. Users will need to go to an enrollment center (usually a bank) to have their fingerprints taken in order to use this type of cards.

One thing to note is that this type of biometric authentication only works with the new chip-and-pin cards, which has been gaining momentum in the U.S. thanks to regulatory changes in the past two years that pushed merchants and banks to upgrade from the magnetic stripe cards and swipe-only POS terminals.

What Brands Need To Do
Mastercard has been exploring the integration of biometric technology in payment authentication for a while now. Previously, the credit card company also tested a mobile payment method that is authenticated by taking a selfie. Other brands, especially those in retail and financial services, should take notes and start thinking about how to upgrade their security and authentication process by using new biometric technologies to provide a smoother user experience.  

 

Source: Engadget

 

Mastercard Creates Experiential Record Store For Grammy Tie-In Campaign

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
To promote its digital wallet service Masterpass, Mastercard has created a record store in Los Angeles that offer interactive music experience for music fans. As part of its #ThankTheFans campaign for the upcoming Grammy Awards, the credit card company transformed Gibson Brands Sunset into an experiential record store where Masterpass users will have exclusive access to shop for rare and unique vinyl for just $10. They will also get to unlock special offers for $1 during the live broadcast whenever a Grammy winner expresses gratitude to the fans in their speech.

What Brands Need To Do
This campaign is a cool example of how brands may combine experiential marketing with real-time event marketing to create a truly unique customer experience. This year, we have seen some retailers embracing experiential marketing by partnering with fashion brands to open pop-up shops in their stores, providing shoppers with a more varied in-store experience. As mobile technologies continue to blur the line between physical and digital marketing, brands will have to figure out how to leverage their digital assets to reach customers in the real world with exciting experience activated via mobile.

 

Source: BusinessWire

Android Pay Now Supports More Websites With Visa & Mastercard Integration

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Android users can now use Android Pay to complete purchases on “hundreds of thousands” of websites thanks to partnerships that Google struck with Visa and Mastercard. Any website that currently accepts Visa Checkout or Masterpass will now also support Android Pay, offering users a seamless checkout experience on the mobile web.

What Brands Should Do
Similar to the way Apple rolled out Apple Pay to the mobile web earlier this year, this extension of Android Pay should greatly benefit brands that sell directly on their websites. A recent study shows that smartphones now account for nearly half of all traffic to ecommerce sites, yet they only make up about 10% of sales. One big reason for this discrepancy is the friction caused by the manual input of payment information, and supporting mobile payment can eliminate some friction in online shopping and reduce shopping cart abandonment. Therefore, brands should be proactive when it comes to adding support for mobile payment to their sites so as to provide a better shopper experience.

For more information on how brands can modernize their user experiences to better engage with mobile shoppers, check out the Boundless Retail section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Engadget

Mastercard Taps PlaceIQ For Offline Attribution

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Mastercard is teaming up with location intelligence firm PlaceIQ to offer brand marketers valuable consumer insights by combining purchase data with consumer behavior in the physical world. The partnership aims to combine Mastercard Audiences data with PlaceIQ’s proprietary location data and targeting tools to help retailers and businesses link what people buy to where they go in order to better understand their customers. The data from both parties will be anonymized and used to create segments that retailers and brand marketers can buy against to improve their ad targeting.

What Brands Need To Do
Offline tracking and attribution appear to be a hot trend in digital advertising right now as major players such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Foursquare all recently released their own offline attribution tools to court advertisers. By bringing purchase data from Mastercard into its ad platform, PlaceIQ is offering brand marketers a new targeting opportunity to reach their desired customers. While still a relatively new practice, offline attribution has quickly become a crucial part of digital ad measurement, especially for retailers and CPG brands. Therefore, brands should take a data-driven approach towards their digital marketing efforts and take note of the new tools as they become available.

 

Source: AdExchanger

You Can Soon Authenticate A MasterCard Payment With A Selfie

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
MasterCard is bringing new security measures to digital payment, as part of its push towards cardless payment. The credit card company has confirmed its plan to roll out a new “Selfie Pay” feature to its mobile app this year, which will allow users to authenticate their payments by taking a selfie. The company says this facial recognition system will only be used in certain contexts when extra authentication is needed. Moreover, MasterCard revealed that it is also working on heartbeat-based authentication, which uses sensors to read a person’s electrocardiogram, the unique electrical signal produced by their heart, to identify users and confirm payments passively and more quickly than with a selfie.

What Brands Need To Do
MasterCard’s foray into biometric-based authentication is illustrative of the way mobile and wearable technologies are transforming the ways people pay. As the security measures for mobile payments continue to evolve and improve, brands need to start incorporating existing reward and loyalty programs into mobile payment solutions in order to offer customers a frictionless shopping experience.

 

Sources: The Verge

Apple Pay Users Can Get Free Tube Rides In London For Three Days

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Londoners will be able to ride the Tube for free with Apple Pay over the next three Mondays, thanks to a “Fare Free Mondays” promotion that MasterCard is running to incentivize its users to ditch their credit cards for mobile payment. On February 29th, March 8th, and March 15th, London Tube riders just need to add their MasterCard cards to Apple Pay, and tap their iPhones at the turnstile to take free rides, thanks to the London Underground’s contactless ticketing system installed in 2003.

What Brands Need To Do
This MasterCard promotion provides a good example for the kind of cool sponsorships that brands can leverage to incentivize the use of a product or service while aligning the brand with great experiences and providing customers with value. Furthermore, encouraging users to use mobile payments can help brands remove some friction in online purchases, while also allowing brands to take advantage of reward programs linked to mobile payment solutions. Therefore brands that wish to stay ahead of the digital curve should consider forging partnerships and running similar promotions to onboard more customers to mobile payments.

For more information on how brands can modernize their user experiences to better engage with shoppers, check out the Boundless Retail section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: The Verge

MasterCard To Turn Everyday Gadgets Into Credit Cards

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Soon you may be paying for a dinner with your car key. Earlier this week, MasterCard announced it is launching a new program that aims to add contactless payment capabilities to everyday gadgets. MasterCard has already gotten some tech partners on board to create some prototypes, which include a key fob made by GM, a ring from Ringly, and a wristband from Nymi, all with MasterCard’s wireless payments tech built in.

What Brands Need To Do
As more and more devices become connected, MasterCard is smart to start experimenting with connected devices and develop payment solutions that are independent of smartphones. As mobile payment continues to evolve, brands need to keep up with changing consumer purchasing behavior and start integrating value offers and loyalty programs into a growing array of emerging payment solutions.

 

Source: The Verge

How Credit Card Companies Are Enhancing Payment Security

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: WSJ

Major credit card companies are finally stepping up their game in payment security: Visa is reportedly expanding tokenization to devices beyond iOS ones, and MasterCard plans to spend $20 million on developing biometrics and fingerprint matching to strengthen its mobile payment security.

As mobile payments begin to gain traction, mobile devices now reportedly make up a disproportionate share of up 21 percent of all fraud costs that merchants and card issuers suffered each year. Amid such high fraud concerns, it’s only sensible for credit card companies to beef up their security measures.

MasterCard Protects Purchases Via Location

Posted on by Lab Team

MasterCard is debuting a new program that protects purchases made on credit cards based on smartphone location. In partnership with Syniverse, the program lets customers protect purchases made in foreign countries unless their smartphone is also in that location. It limits fraud, and takes the toll off of call centers, in that customers don’t have to call banks to alert them to travel plans. The system simply sees that you’re in the same place as your purchases, and clears them. As far as privacy of location is concerned, MasterCard says that the program is only opt-in, so there’s no automatic activation. It’s also said that it will be combining the program with select offers for specific locations, so users in the program can expect to see coupons and offers for things around them, a key step forward for brands looking to work with MasterCard on digital campaigns.