MasterCard Worldwide will be the exclusive brand of the Transport for London’s Oyster card wallet as the international card brand hopes to raise consumer awareness of its PayPass contactless-payment service, MasterCard announced Jan. 17.
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 head of Europe transit, tells Payments Source. The functions of the actual Oyster card will stay the same, he notes.
Eventually, consumers also may use PayPass to access transportation services within London and would not need a separate Oyster card, Cowen says, declining to estimate when that might occur. “MasterCard has been actively working with the Transport for London to enable consumers to access travel service and make purchases through one card,” he says.
Consumers also may combine the Oyster application with a Visa-branded chip-and-PIN credit card issued by Barclaycard UK for use in accessing the London transport system. A representative from the Transport for London was unable to comment by PaymentsSource deadline.
MasterCard’s partnership deal with Transport for London 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 both in the UK and internationally, contends Matt Simester, director of Auriemma Consulting Group in the UK.
This is a good time to start introducing more contactless-payment options because in the UK contactless has gone from early adoption to mass adoption fairly quickly, Simester says.
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