MasterCard Inc. has agreed to become the exclusive card brand for Transport for London's Oyster card wallet.
The Oyster card supports contactless payments for access to all modes of transportation within London. Riders may load funds into their card accounts either online or through a reload kiosk.
The MasterCard brand will appear on the plastic Oyster card sleeve distributed with all new Oyster cards, Mike Cowen, MasterCard's head of Europe transit, said. The functions of the actual Oyster card will stay the same.
Eventually, consumers also may use MasterCard's contactless payment system, PayPass, to access transportation services without a separate Oyster card, Cowen said, declining to estimate when that might occur.
Consumers also may combine the Oyster application with a Visa Inc. chip-and-PIN credit card issued by Barclaycard UK for use in accessing the London transport system.
MasterCard's partnership deal with Transport for London, announced Jan. 17, will help the card brand to receive more visibility, and it might help sway consumers to view MasterCard as the preferred provider of contactless technology for transportation, said Matt Simester, director of Auriemma Consulting Group in the United Kingdom.
