BarclayCard and Orange launched their joint effort last month as part of a strategic alliance between the bank and telco aimed at pushing through the development and adoption of contactless mobile payments services.

The MasterCard inControl functionality lets cardholders go online and set personalised controls and spend budgets, with SMS alerts or e-mails instantly sent when these are exceeded. Controls can also be set to trigger an alert or block on transactions made online or abroad.

MasterCard says the BarclayCard deal is the first deployment of inControl functionality for consumer cards. Initially covering the Orange card, in the future it will be offered for other Barclaycard cards.

The inControl technology was developed by MasterCard in association with Dublin-based payments technology vendor Orbiscom, which the card giant then acquired for around $100 million last year. It was originally targeted at commercial cards, with Royal Bank of Scotland among the banks signing up to it.

Chris Wood, MD, UK foundation and partnerships, Barclaycard, says: "With inControl, we are able to utilise MasterCard's advanced network technology and capabilities to fulfil the demand from cardholders for ever more convenient ways to pay and manage their spending."

Josh Peirez, head, innovative platforms, MasterCard, adds: "The launch of this service from Barclaycard is clear demonstration of the growing trend by financial institutions to offer smart cardholder services that put financial control back into cardholders' hands and we are excited to be working with them to both implement the first consumer application of our inControl service and harness its value for their customers."