MasterCard’s head of emerging payments, Ed McLaughlin, recently sat down with Austin Carr of Fast Company to discuss the future of credit cards. According to McLaughlin “we’re rapidly moving to a world beyond plastic. In many ways, plastic is just convenient packaging.” He believes that the future of on-the-go payments lies in the hands of near-field communication but the adoption rate seems to be extremely slow and availability seems very limited. Although NFC technology has been featured in a number of Android devices, MasterCard feels that it won’t go mainstream until an iPhone is equipped with the mobile payment solution.
Apple has repeatedly shown that it is one of the few consumer electronics companies right now that has the ability to transform and create entire industries. Before iTunes and the iPod, a very small number of people paid for digital music and media tablets were also a non-factor until the iPad. It seems like the mobile payment industry might need Apple to become a mainstream phenomenon as well.
One of the interesting things that McLaughlin mentioned was that he “doesn’t know of any handset manufacturer that isn’t in process of making sure their stuff is PayPass ready.” When asked specifically if Apple was one of these manufacturers, McLaughlin stuttered; “Um, there are … like I say, [I don’t know of’ any handset maker out there. Now, when we have discussions with our partners and they ask us not to disclose them, we don’t.” This leads everyone to believe that Apple is working on incorporating the NFC technology and hasn’t announced or revealed anything as of yet. It is quite possible that we will be seeing the technology available in the next-generation iPhone (rumored to be the iPhone 5).
Source: BusinessInsider, Fast Company
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