Mastercard is angling for a prime position in the smart cities market. The company has announced plans participate in next week’s Smart City Expo in Barcelona, where company representatives will speak on a number of topics such as “Citizen Inclusion and Corporate Social Responsibility” and “Public-Private-People-Partnerships and New Forms of Collaboration”.
Another topic on the roster is “Getting Smart About Tourism – Understanding Where and How Consumers Will Spend in 2017”, a talk that will be given by Market Insights SVP Sarah Quinlan on November 17th. Further details on talking points haven’t yet been revealed, but it could be interesting, given the growing prevalence of Mastercard’s Masterpass digital payment platform.
With Masterpass finding some new and rather novel applications, such as integration into some important transit infrastructure in New York, it’s becoming clear that digital payment technologies could be an important component of the smart city of the future. Smart City payments integrations are being explored around the world, with the Japanese government, for instance, now starting to explore the cutting edge of tourism analytics with a planned biometric payment system for tourists at the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics. As such, there could be even more intriguing developments in the works on Mastercard’s part.
That’s just speculation, of course – and whatever it actually ends up covering, the talk is just one of many that Mastercard is planning for the Smart City Expo, which will take place from November 15th to 17th.
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