MasterCard partners for US P2P m-payment service

MasterCard has agreed to offer a fully-integrated on-demand person-to-person m-payment service in the US with Obopay.

The service, offered via MasterCard MoneySend, will give new and existing MasterCard issuing customers the ability to provide an m-payments service to their cardholders on all credit, debit and prepaid MasterCard-branded products.

TowerGroup estimates that in the US, adoption of consumer m-banking has quintupled in the past 12 months from 1.1m active users in 2007 to 5.7m active users today. As mobile consumers become increasingly comfortable with converging technologies on their mobile devices, the opportunity to develop m-payments systems will continue to grow.

The new Mobile MasterCard MoneySend Person-to-Person service will give participants the freedom and flexibility to directly, easily and securely send and receive funds through any registered cardholder's mobile phone. The service will make mobile money transfer seamless for millions of consumers. Participants will use mobile numbers to send and receive funds, keeping their payment account numbers private.

“Our strong partnership with Obopay takes the development of the mobile person-to-person payments framework to the next level,” says Art Kranzley, chief emerging technology officer, MasterCard Worldwide.

“The power and breadth of the MasterCard network combined with the account relationships of MasterCard issuers and Obopay's mobile payment technology enable us to offer valuable new services for consumers throughout the US, allowing consumers to easily transfer funds to their friends and families. We will launch this new service with our financial institution customers and Obopay in the near future.”