Are even Visa and MasterCard participating in the digital payment revolution with, respectively, V.me and MasterPass? Yes, and the Economist has assigned a place of honor to the digital wallets created by these circuits among the tools that are accelerating the path towards the digitalization of money. In fact, there has been a lot of talk over the last year about the fact that the world of credit cards, or better, of electronic payment has been turned upside-down by a radicalization of payments through the V.me or MasterPass systems. How?
V.me is a digital payment service promoted by Visa that functions like a digital wallet in which it is possible to insert data for all of one’s credit and prepaid cards, not just those exclusively belonging to the circuit. In this way, any time one decides to do shopping online, it is not necessary to repeat codes that slow down the acquisition process, it is enough to indicate which registered card one intends to use for the acquisition. Thus, on ecommerce portals, at least in terms of time and simplicity, payment becomes similar to that of real acquisitions.
The V.me service is already open to the public in France, Poland, Spain, and the U.K., as well as the competing MasterPass, which was presented during the Mobile World Congress last year in Barcelona by MasterCard, which created it to improve acquisition experiences both online and for traditional payments.
MasterPass represents the evolution of PayPass Wallet, which was presented in the spring of 2012, and is a digital service with an open standard that, just like V.me, makes it possible to use not only MasterCard and Maestro but also cards from other operators.
The new service by MasterCard was created, therefore, in response to the needs of its users, who can now make payments from any device, thanks to a global standard that allows retailers to accept electronic payments independently from where the consumer may be located.
As for in shop acquisitions, MasterPass permits the use of NFC technology, QR code, labels, and adhesives. The digital world has transformed shopping, rendering each device a commercial device and each moment a possible moment to make an acquisition: in shops, from home, on the move, following the multichannel trend.
Thanks to MasterPass Wallet, as well, consumers can save the data of their cards, of expeditions, and other information in cloud mode and completely securely. Up to this point there is no difference from other existing digital wallets. The true novelty and what could be considered the revolutionary aspect for the digital payment ecosystem as it has existed until now (at least in Italy’s case) is that Visa first and then MasterCard have launched an app that allows sensitive data to be stored on a cloud instead of on a smartphone’s sim card. In fact, with HCE it is possible to emulate a payment card, by through an app installed on a mobile, by speaking directly with the NFC Controller, avoiding the physical passage through the secure element.
The initials that everyone will soon be talking about, given that Google has also “married” the technology (in particular with Android Kit Kat), is HCE, or Host Card Emulation. The reason it is truly revolutionary is because it allows for the circumnavigation of telephone operators who until now had made banks pay fees for keeping client payment data. The hope is that with the elimination of this cost digital payment fees will be reduced not only for circuits and banks but for clients as well. Thanks also to the fact that with HCE the payment transaction occurs in Card Present mode and the values of MSC (Merchant Service Charge) are more contained in respect to those that, in normal conditions, use a CNP (Card Not Present) transaction. The true revolution and the real advantages seem, therefore, to be linked to cloud technology and hopes are that such promising ideas from Google as well as payment circuit proposals like V.me and MasterPass will become reality.
