By Sarah Clark
Mastercard is testing a new service that enables cardholders to simply tap their contactless bank card to their NFC smartphone in order to complete an ecommerce or other card-not-present transaction, executive vice president Jennifer Marriner has revealed.
“The ease of tapping in store can be replicated in ecommerce through Tap to Pay,” Marriner explains. “If you’re shopping online, you can tap your card against your phone to complete your transaction, without having to type in your card information, and you can also save your card on file for future purchases.”
The new Tap to Pay service is being piloted by Ingresse in Brazil and also by food and beverage (F&B) platform OpenRice in Hong Kong. It forms part of a new ‘Tap to More’ service suite that also includes:
“As the physical and digital experiences continue to converge, we’re taking the tap beyond physical checkout,” Marriner says.
“With our Tap to More set of contactless modalities, we can make digital commerce even faster, safer and simpler, from instantly provisioning a card into a mobile wallet to verifying a transaction to sending money to friends and family, all with just a tap.”
OpenRice is using the new Tap on Own Device offering to provide its restaurant customers with the ability to offer diners a card-present self-checkout solution.
“Mastercard cardholders paying via OpenRice App can enjoy the same robust and multi-layered security protections that come with paying via the existing Mastercard payment solution,” Mastercard Hong Kong explains.
“The OpenRice mobile app currently allows cardholders to pay via Mastercard and other payment cards linked to their OpenRice accounts or digital wallets. Supported by the card-on-file solution, the payment process can be activated through scanning a payment QR code initiated by restaurants.”
With the new service, “upon scanning the QR codes presented in partnered restaurants with OpenRice Pay in the enhanced OpenRice mobile app, cardholders will also be able to pay for their restaurant bills all on their own by tapping their physical contactless Mastercard cards against their own Android devices.”
