MasterCard is looking to take payments beyond cards and mobile phones, inviting fashion and design students to build new ways to pay.
The firm is teaming up with the New School’s Parsons School of Design in New York on a day-long hackathon for students from fashion, industrial design, product design, data visualization, and design and technology programmes.
Split into teams of three, on 5 March the students will build prototypes for "connected commerce", embedding payment functionality into products and new designs and concepts. A panel including fashion designer Adam Selman and MasterCard's Sherri Haymond will then pick winners of a $15,000 prize pot.
Says Haymond: "What you buy and how you pay will soon blend seamlessly into your lifestyle as design, usability and technology merge together in new ways. The Fashion and Design Hack with Parsons is another way for us to integrate design-led thinking into payments innovation and tap into the creativity and ingenuity of the school’s design students."
Last year Selman was among the first - alongside General Motors - to join a MasterCard programme that lets partner firms turn anything from purses to keyfobs to jewellery in contactless payments devices.
Visa is also looking to students to help it take wearable payments beyond watches, forming its own partnership with Central Saint Martins College in London that has seen participants explore the next frontier of frictionless commerce. The card scheme has also partnered with the House of Holland to demonstrate the potential for contactless payments on the catwalk.