Tag: MasterCard

Partnership aims to develop a mobile commerce solution for financial institutions

MasterCard has announced that it has partnered with Monitise, makers of a popular mobile banking and payments platform. Together, the two companies will work to deliver a new mobile payments service that is designed to be used by financial institutions throughout the world. Financial institutions are beginning to feel pressure to engage mobile consumers more as these consumers become more reliant on their mobile devices. Without providing these consumers with mobile-centric services, they may seek out other institutions that accommodate their interests more effectively.

Financial institutions are feeling the need to accommodate the interests of mobile-centric consumers

Both MasterCard and Monitise have extensive experience in the mobile commerce field. Both companies currently have mobile commerce platforms that are available to the public and these platforms are used throughout the world. The new platform the companies are developing through their partnership is expected to have higher levels of security in order to help financial institutions address some of the concerns that consumers have regarding mobile commerce.

Security remains a major issue in the mobile commerce field, but consumers are still willing to shop from their mobile devices

Security has been a problem in the mobile commerce field for some time. Because mobile commerce deals in the trafficking of financial information, it has become a very popular target for hackers and other malicious groups. Consumers have often criticized the mobile commerce platforms they have used in the past as not being secure enough. Several high profile cyber attacks on large retailers have also called into question whether the mobile commerce sector is taking security as seriously as it should.

Financial institutions that do not accommodate mobile consumers could become irrelevant in the future

While consumers are concerned for the security of their financial information, security concerns have done little to stop them from actually participating in mobile payments. The demand for convenient mobile commerce platforms has been growing at a rapid pace as consumers become more comfortable with the concept of mobile payments. Financial institutions that are unable or unwilling to accommodate this demand may find themselves becoming increasingly irrelevant to mobile-centric consumers.

The credit card giant will be working with Syniverse on this location based verification checking.

With the explosion in the number of smartphone users that there are around the world, MasterCard is working to capitalize on these consumers – particularly those travelling internationally – and to encourage them to use their services without the risk of losing time, patience, and money to security problems, by using geolocation technology for verification.

A new security system is now being implemented to confirm credit card payments through customer smartphones.

This is not an entirely revolutionary process, but instead uses geolocation technology as a variation of the current standard two step process of authentication. However, instead of requiring the smartphone user to enter an additional login code, as is the case with certain web services, the proposal of MasterCard is to use the GPS function from mobile devices, which has become a standard function in most smartphones.

The idea is to use geolocation technology to show that the card and user are in the same place.

What this means is that if the smartphone of the credit card user is located in the same place as the card when it is being used, then the transaction receives approval. MasterCard has said that this helps to shrink the chance of both unauthorized attempts to use the card and of declined transactions that are actually valid.

The one problem that has been identified that could cause a considerable problem to this mobile security system is that when users travel internationally, the odds are that they will have shut off their data service in order to help to reduce the chance of building up expensive roaming charges. This would eliminate the benefit of the concept behind MasterCard’s validation service.

MasterCard has not failed to recognize this issue. The company is, therefore, working to offer prepaid data packages that can be purchased directly through their own mobile devices from the moment that they arrive in another country. This is meant to help to encourage users to keep their data connection enabled so that they will be able to use the added security based on geolocation technology.