MasterCard announced a new type of mobile wallet service last night, in an attempt to make the process of paying with mobile phones easier for consumers.
The new PayPass Wallet Services app will allow users to make purchases by just making a single click or tap using their device.
“We think of MasterCard’s mission as using technology to make payments safer, simpler, smarter and this is just one of the ways we’re progressing against that mission,” Ed McLaughlin, chief of emerging payments office at MasterCard, told Mashable.
The product has three elements – the acceptance network, which allows merchants to accept payments across multiple channels, the wallet, which allows banks and merchants to have their own wallets for consumers, and the API, which allows developers to include MasterCard PayPass elements in their own programs.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
