Tech fans rejoice! Visa Inc. and MasterCard are in the designing phases of wearables that accept payment. Recently, the two companies announced the new venture at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. MasterCard will be partnering with WiseKey, a security software group whose tech is used by luxury watchmakers. Visa is expanding its Visa Ready Program, which houses a token-service provider that masks customer card account numbers for digital transactions. Visa and MasterCard are responding to a growing demand for combining wearables and banking functions by Millennials.
The credit card providers say the idea is to bring contactless payments to any watch, not just smart watches. WiseKey will use near-field communication for payments, the same technology used for Apple Pay and other mobile wallets. Sherri Haymond, senior vice president for digital payments at MasterCard, explains that the company is combining WiseKey’s security software with payments technology. Their intent is to add payments functionality to traditional watches, so consumers won’t have to purchase expensive smartwatches.
MasterCard is not stopping at adding payments capabilities to watches. The company is extending the wearables program to other gadgets and appliances. Earlier this year, the company announced plans to integrate the same software into smart refrigerators that order groceries and pay remotely. Both MasterCard and Visa plan on investing a great deal of money and research into wearables and payments. Research firm, Tractica, predicts that payments volume for wearable devices alone will total more than $501 billion by 2020.
Both companies hope to be on the forefront of adding payments functionality to consumer technologies. MasterCard also announced a collaboration with Coin, a startup that makes physical wallets which enable payments using multiple cards held by consumers.
The wearables market is growing faster than predicted. But integration between banking and consumer gadgets presents more opportunities for credit fraud. If there is an increase in fraud, consumers will seek out reputable credit repair services. eMerchantBroker.com is America’s number one payment processor that will support your credit repair merchant account. We can get your application processed in as little as 24 hours.