Mastercard And Oracle Bring Smartphone Digital Payment Service To The World Of Retail And Hospitality

Mastercard and Oracle have announced a global partnership at Mobile World Congress 2017 that will deliver a digital payment service to the retail and hospitality sectors.

Targeted at restaurants, hotels and retail stores, the partnership will focus on improving both the in-store experience and operational efficiency, as well as providing cross-channel consistency through the integration of Mastercard’s Masterpass service into Oracle products.

“Building on the success of our joint initiatives with Oracle in the UK, we can help retailers and hospitality providers connect with their customers in more engaging ways while enabling them to grow their businesses with scale, speed and security,” said Chris Fendley, SVP of merchant development at Mastercard.

Digital payments

Oracle and Mastercard will look to develop enhanced in-store experiences such as Qkr! with Masterpass, a mobile app that enables customers to order and pay for goods and services via their smartphone.

This removes the need for consumers to wait in line or for restaurant servers, increasing the speed and convenience of paying for goods and splitting the bill with others.

The service is already being used by a range of partners, including the likes of wagamama, Carluccio’s and Young & Co.s Brewery. The Qkr platform will be expanded into Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Singapore, South Africa and the US this year.

In addition, Mastercard Payment Gateway Services will enable retailers to benefit from fully-integrated digital payment and fraud prevention, rather than having to develop and implement separate systems for in-store and online operations.

The digital payments industry is currently riding a wave of growth, with a noticeable shift in consumer attitude towards new payment technology being seen over the last couple of years.

And the world’s biggest financial businesses are responding to this shift. Just this month Barclaycard announced it will be integrating payment tech into jewellery and watches and Visa opened an innovation centre in London to develop new payment services.

Mastercard itself recently purchased UK FinTech firm VocaLink for £700m, illustrating that the future of payments is indeed digital.

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