MasterCard Worldwide partnered with Giesecke & Devrient to provide Canadians with MasterCard PayPass, a faster, convenient and more secure way to make purchases.
Cardholders with a PayPass-enabled MasterCard can pay for their purchase by simply tapping their card on a specially equipped point-of-sale terminal.
Introduced to Canadians in 2004, PayPass continues to grow in its popularity and is embraced by consumers, card issuers and major merchants, including Citibank,
President's Choice Financial, Tim Hortons, Petro-Canada, Rabba Fine Foods, Cineplex Theatres, and Coffee Time. Most recently, McDonald's Canada announced plans to make the payment service available in their stores beginning in 2008.
"G&D is proud to support MasterCard PayPass in the Canadian market. G&D offers the innovation to allow Canadian consumers a convenient and secure payment experience." says Anna Rossetti, President Giesecke & Devrient Canada.
MasterCard PayPass is ideal for traditionally cash-heavy environments where prompt customer service is essential, such as quick service restaurants, drug stores, gas stations, vending machines, convenience stores, sports arenas, movie theatres, transit systems and parking garages.
"MasterCard PayPass is popular with merchants because contactless payments are simpler and faster than cash, which reduces customer wait times - it is a new and fast way to pay," says Kevin Stanton President, MasterCard Canada. "Together with Giesecke & Devrient, we will continue to provide new and innovative payment technology."
Separately, MasterCard Worldwide today announced the launch of a new integrated contact and contactless EMV chip card payment application that supports both M/Chip 4 and MasterCard PayPass for issuing banks using the MULTOS smart card platform.
The new MasterCard Integrated Card Application (MICA) provides the established and proven functionality of M/Chip 4 and PayPass M/Chip in one single application. This enhances the selection of the MasterCard dual interface payment technology for all MULTOS card issuers. At present, more
than 75 million cards issued in 32 countries across the world use the MULTOS platform. MICA provides these issuing banks with a choice of chip card platform solutions to support the delivery of their chosen strategies for EMV and PayPass.
MICA has proven that a dual interface application can deliver contactless transactions in less than half a second while passing stringent security assessments. This means that cardholders can benefit from rapid but safe contactless transactions.
Toni Merschen, Group Head Chip, MasterCard Worldwide, said: "MULTOS issuers can now quickly and easily deploy MasterCard PayPass without having to switch card technology or operating practices, enabling them to take full advantage of the business benefits it has to offer. The new application simplifies the issuance of combined M/Chip contact and PayPass M/Chip contactless cards while offering a high speed and secure solution for the convenience and confidence of issuers
and cardholders alike. We are very excited to see that MICA can deliver some of the fastest contactless transactions that we have ever seen in the market."
Tim France-Massey, Chairman of the MULTOS Consortium Business Advisory Group, said: "The MICA application on the MULTOS platform provides a fast-track, 'off-the-shelf' route for issuing banks to deploy EMV and MasterCard PayPass. The new integrated application makes MULTOS a convenient option for the issuance of PayPass EMV cards and further demonstrates the future-proofing of the platform for the benefit of issuing banks."
As of Q3 2007, there are more than 19 million MasterCard PayPass cards and devices in use at more than 73,000 diverse merchant locations globally, including fast food outlets McDonald's, Burger King and Starbucks; convenience stores 7-Eleven; Coca-Cola Enterprises' vending machines; Cinebonus, TAV (İstanbul Atatürk Airport Otopark) and the İstanbul Ferry Corporation, and New York City subway and taxis. PayPass is currently being trialed or rolled out in 20 countries, including France, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, China, Korea, Taiwan, the UK and the United States.