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What if you could pay for your latte with your ring, or pay for your gas with your key chain, without leaving your car? Well, if MasterCard has its way, that's exactly what’s in your future, having developed a new program letting consumers pay with everything from jewelry and wearable devices to fashion gear and automotive accessories.
MasterCard has teamed up with a variety of brands, designers and retailers to create this program, and turn their devices into mobile payment centers. Their current partners include General Motors; Nymi, a wearable tech company; Ringly, a creator of smart jewelry; TrackR, a company that creates Bluetooth locators; and fashion designer Adam Selman. Some of the prototypes in the works include a key Fob from GM, a wristband from Nymi and a ring designed by Ringly.
According to MasterCard, this is just the beginning these technologies can be used to let just about any device make payments. “As more and more ‘things’ become connected, consumers will have endless possibilities when it comes to how they pay, and will need all of their devices to work seamlessly together,” said Ed McLaughlin, Chief Emerging Payments Officer at MasterCard.
The new digital wallet gadgets will be for sale in the U.S. starting in 2016, and are expected to be rolled out in other counties later.
Capital One on board
Capital One has signed up to be part of the program, and is the first one to do so, letting their cardholders pay with more devices, once the technology is launched. They will be using it with Capital One Wallet, which will use tokenization to keep people’s data safe, while also providing users with real time notifications about account activity.
This program is rooted in the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) and the Digital Enablement Express (Express) program, which provide tokenization, so that rather than people’s financial information being relayed during transactions, a token is transmitted instead thereby safeguarding people‘s data.
To make this new Back to the Future -style program possible, MasterCard also partnered with NXP and Qualcomm Incorporated to create the technology that makes it possible to make any device a digital wallet.