MasterCard announced it is partnering with Obopay for a pilot of on-demand person-to-person (P2P) mobile payments service to launch next year to its U.S. cardholders. The service will be offered through MoneySend, a MC P2P money-transfer remittance system, for cardholders to send and receive funds through their mobile phones.
The transfers will be between mobile numbers, not bank accounts, to assuage security and fraud concerns. The service will enable issuing banks to provide a mobile payments service to cardholders on all credit, debit and prepaid MasterCard-branded products.
Teaming with Obopay offers a quicker technology ramp-up. Obopay has been developing P2P mobile payments since 2003, including in the remittance area and in account-to-account trials with Citibank.
