MasterCard Inc. has hired an executive who has been integral in the French wireless carrier Orange's rollout of mobile payments services, according to an online report by NFC Times.
Mung-Ki Woo, Orange's vice president of electronic payments and transactions, is joining MasterCard to run the Purchase, N.Y., card payments network's mobile payment and m-commerce business, the website reported, citing anonymous sources.
A spokeswoman for MasterCard declined to comment Friday. A spokeswoman for Orange said she was unaware of any changes related to Woo's employment.
NFC Times said Woo is expected to report to Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard's chief emerging payments officer. MasterCard in recent years has conducted a number of mobile and contactless payment trials worldwide, especially in the transit industry, and has said it expects to put more resources behind such activities this year, including in the U.S.
At Orange, a subsidiary of France Telecom SA, Woo has been involved in several mobile payment trials and the development of several commercial services, including a commercial deployment of a mobile payments system based on near-field communication technology in Nice, France.
Several mobile phone manufacturers are said to be using NFC chips for their next-generation handsets.
"We are strong believers in NFC," Woo said during a panel discussion at the Cartes & Identification payments card conference in Paris in December.
Woo acknowledged challenges to offering mobile payments services based on the technology because of the numerous parties that have a stake in such systems, including wireless carriers, banks and payments networks.
"It's been taking much longer than all of us had anticipated," Woo said. "It's complex from a technology point of view, it's complex from a business ecosystem point of view."
