Mastercard partnered with cloud provider Oracle today in order to expand its Masterpass network among retailers and customers globally.
The partnership is an extension of its existing colaboration with Oracle in the United Kingdom.
“From our perspective our relationship with Oracle really started with our Qkr! platform,” Philip Herrey, head of global channel partners for Mastercard, told Bank Innovation. “Through its integration with MICROS, Oracle has got a strong foothold in the [global POS] system.”
MICROS is a software provider Oracle bought in 2014 for about $5 billion, and has allowed it to scale its POS system across a global collection of restaurants, hotels, retailers, and other businesses.
Masterpass is accepted at about 340,000 merchants for online and in-app purchases, as well as more than 6 million locations in about 80 countries that allow contactless payments, according to the company.
“Oracle’s clients are looking to have the same P2P encryption services, the same tokenization technologies as seen in another market–they want to transfer those abilities to another market,” said Herrey. “We are offering a gateway, but we also have a global reach.”
Mastercard’s offerings will be integrating into Oracle’s POS software, which will give the digital payments service greater scale and support across the globe.
When it comes to digital payments, meeting “operational needs” means developing a system that can securely go cross-channel, detect fraudsters, and of course support a mobile API, all while making sure the consumer using the service sees none of that.
“Taking friction away on the retailer’s end is very important for their relationship with consumers,” Mike Minelli, vice president of digital payments and labs for Mastercard, told Bank Innovation. “They are trying to cater towards this more frictionless atmosphere.”
Mastercard’s merge into the Oracle POS system will include its Qkr! with Masterpass product, a mobile platform that now will be expanding to six new markets, including Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Singapore, South Africa and the United States, according to a second announcement made by the company.
Qkr! was first developed for use at restaurants, though it has since expanded to gas stations and other retail arenas.
With pretty much everyone in the buzzing world of retail payments playing for the same customers, having the ability to pay without flagging down a server is certainly an attractive perk to attach.
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