As mobile payments options expand, adoption will increase. Let’s not forget security!

The mobile payment market just got a lot more interesting with this week’s announcement about Mastercard taking its Masterpass digital payment platform mobile.   

The addition of Masterpass to the mobile payment market (joining the likes of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay) is giving consumers the options needed to drive cultural change and increase adoption. 

According to a 451 Research study, consumers want payment options that work across channels. “They expect it to seamlessly work across the virtual and physical worlds, much in the same way their credit card is able to today.  

Mass enablement is the key to a large scale shift in payment culture for merchants, issuers and customers. Think back to the early days of broadband. Its wide adoption didn’t happen until the telecommunication companies made it available en masse at an affordable cost. 

A trusted brand like Mastercard, working in partnership with bank-issuing partners – also trusted institutions by the consumer and merchant alike – could be the tipping point needed to see a jump in mobile payment adoption. 

In the press release announcing the Masterpass service expansion, more than 80 million accounts will be automatically enabled through issuing partners as the service becomes available globally. Service will start in the U.S. this month and by end of year with global rollout continuing this year and into 2017. The announcement also unveiled an updated Mastercard logo and brand identity, tuned for the digital market. 

Digital wallets help drive consumer convenience and merchant confidence

At the end of the day, a customer wants to buy something with as little frustration as possible and the merchant wants to accept a payment from legitimate customers. It’s as simple as that. 

The exciting thing about digital wallets is they are a payment mechanism that has been specifically designed to fuel the mobile economy and they have no geographical limitations sparking a business opportunity to play in the global market without the frustration and complexity of legacy payment infrastructure.   

Whatever the wallet, security must be top of mind

Whatever the payment platform, a critical element is security. One of the biggest issues is ensuring the credit card information being assigned (or provisioned) to the mobile device or mobile wallet – and the device itself – belong to the same person. 

Mobile payment fraud occurs when a bad actor steals an individual’s cardholder information and provisions that legitimate data to his or her device. This is another type of card-not-present fraud that is growing rapidly in a world where EMV chip cards are making point-of-sale fraud transactions obsolete. 

Backed by more than a decade of expertise in authentication and payment security, CA Technologies provides unique tokenization capabilities help to securely provision the cardholder’s credentials — a capability vital to card issuers who want to offer their cardholders digital wallet platforms. 

CA has been at the forefront of helping card issuers with day-one support for their mobile payment systems, starting with Apple Pay and most recently helping a large global bank in the United Kingdom go “live” on launch day with Android Pay. 

With this week’s news from Mastercard, it’s clear we’re in for more platforms and shakeup in the payment world. Let’s make sure security isn’t an afterthought in the quest for consumers’ digital wallets.