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MasterCard Worldwide Monday announced a mobile-payments processing platform that enables financial institutions, merchant acquirers and mobile-network operators to deliver mobile-payment capabilities to consumers. Known as the MasterCard Mobile Payments Gateway, the platform enables consumers to use their wireless phones as mobile wallets by linking their existing MasterCard or Maestro credit, debit or prepaid card accounts to their phones to fund mobile-initiated remote payments, according to MasterCard. PayPass, MasterCard's contactless-payment product, "is geared to face-to-face [transactions]; the gateway is geared toward remote payments," says Pat Killian, MasterCard vice president of product strategic alliances. The application is embedded in a subscriber identity module, or SIM card, within a cell phone. In the future, cell phones in markets using the platform ideally will contain SIM cards preloaded with the application, he says. Currently, consumers have to replace their existing SIM cards with ones that contain the application. "The system is designed to work with the dumbest phone to the higher-end phone," says Killian. Once registered, consumers use the application to link their card accounts and choose a mobile personal identification number to use when initiating remote transactions from their phones, such as bill or person-to-person payments. The application could be especially useful for both banked and unbanked mobile consumers in developing payments markets, MasterCard says. "The Mobile Payments Gateway will help to make mobile payments a way of life for mobile-phone users around the world," Joshua Peirez, MasterCard group executive of Innovative Platforms, said in a release. Consumers interested in using the platform can register with a participating issuer. Brazilian bank Itau Unibanco Holding, Brazil-based processor and acquirer Redecard, and Brazil-based telecommunication-service provider Vivo Participacoes are the first to support the Mobile Payments Gateway, according to MasterCard. Following the launch in Brazil, MasterCard intends to introduce the platform in select global markets.
