Mastercard Efforts Highlight Importance of Transit Front in mPayment, Smart City Markets

As public transport officials convene for this week’s Global Public Transport Summit in Montreal, Mastercard is highlighting how its payment solutions are helping to make the use of public transit easier for commuters around the world.

The company says it recently worked with authorities in Singapore to enable contactless payments on that city-state’s transit network, and has also helped to bring the technology to London. In Bogota, Mastercard says it was involved with the introduction of a combination payment and transit card; and the company also enabled Masterpass for ticket purchases with certain rail lines in New York late last year, helping to promote its mobile-friendly digital payment platform in the process.

As Mastercard Enterprise Partnerships SVP Ian Slater explained in a statement, “having to figure out a new ticketing system every time people visit a new city is the opposite of a seamless experience,” thus Mastercard’s technology “is helping to make the world a smaller, more accessible place.”

The initiatives point to what Mastercard clearly sees as an important front in its efforts to stave off emerging alternative payment platforms like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, and to establish itself as a central position in the smart city market.