Mobile World Congress: Day 2 Trends

Yesterday, PYMNTS detailed what happened during Day 1 of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

That included news like Visa’s car-based commerce deal, and its plans to expand Visa Checkout. It also detailed a series of news announcements from MasterCard, including details about its “selfie pay” expansion plan, MasterPass expansion plans, MasterCard’s IQ Series, its partnership with Coin, and its wearable payments play.

MasterCard also formed a CU wallet partnership to customize digital wallets, and it established a micro-donation platform partnership. And then there was Facebook’s Telecom Infra Project and its virtual reality push. PayPal also broke news with a series of third-party partnerships announcements aimed at growing its global mobile money footprint.

And that was just Day 1.

Now onto Day 2, there’s plenty more to keep up at this global event. Here’s a little of what’s going on so far:

MasterCard Partners To Expand Tokens For Issuer Wallets

MasterCard announced a deal with Giesecke & Devrient to use the MasterCard Digital Enablement Services along with C&D’s Convego CloudPay solution. What this solution does is enable G&D to implement industry-standard tokenization technology for their issuer HCE wallets.

“We have pioneered mobile commerce innovations for years. Alongside G&D, we’re delivering a simple and secure digital payment experience that takes advantage of industry-standard tokenization technology,” said Sherri Haymond, senior vice president, Digital Payments & Labs at MasterCard.

This makes G&D the first third-party company to offer these tokenization services to issuing banks. This solution also offers issuers the ability to deliver a mobile payment experience to work at contactless-enabled POS terminals. Plus, the Convego CloudPay-enabled issuer wallet comes equipped with the security promises of a digital MasterCard transaction.

“This combined solution of MasterCard and G&D benefits all MasterCard issuing banks. Our cooperation with MasterCard enables us to provide the safety and security of MasterCard digitized credentials while meeting the payment credential provisioning and management needs of issuers,” said Edgar Salib, Group Senior VP of Financial Institutions division at G&D. “As global offering, we can offer the service for issuing banks that want to enable their own digital wallets in all countries where MDES is available.”

GSMA/UK Partner On Financial Inclusion Gender Equality

The GSMA Foundation, the GSMA and the U.K. government have paired on an initiative aimed at providing financial support and access to new technologies that enable women to use financial services.

The initiative is also designed to make contributions addressing decent work and economic growth, innovation and infrastructure, affordable and clean energy, clean water and sanitation, and addressing gender inequality.

“Over the last decade the U.K. has been at the forefront of bringing the battle against extreme poverty into the digital era. With more people in developing countries using mobiles than ever before, this partnership with the GSMA and its members will increase access to banking services, especially for women, bring access to energy to many for the first time and even vital health information,” said U.K. International Development Minister Nick Hurd.

“We have a real opportunity to accelerate the development of mobile technologies that can save lives, help women reach their potential and boost the growth of emerging economies for Britain to trade with. A more prosperous, connected and stable world is firmly in our national interest,” he continued.

IoT Marketplace Market For Smart Cities Heats Up 

The term smart cities has become all the rage today. And everyone — from major players like MasterCard to startups — wants a piece of the IoT pie.

At Mobile World Congress on Feb. 23, Libelium launched what it calls The IoT Marketplace — an online store offering integrated solutions from hardware sensors to cloud applications to speed up IoT adoption. The marketplace also includes out-of-the-box kits.

“The IoT Marketplace offers fully integrated solutions trying to prevent customers from getting lost while designing their IoT projects,” said Alicia Asín, CEO of Libelium. “The IoT Marketplace allows companies to try solutions and visualize how to scale them in a cost-effective way”.

Element Blue, ESRI, IBM, Indra, IoTSens, Microsoft, Telefónica, ThingPlus and Thingworx are the first partners to join The IoT Marketplace.

Mobile Payment/Smart Device Security 

There’s been three big trends at MCW ’16 so far: IoT, virtual reality, security, smart cities and mobile payments.

Infineon Technologies AG announced that it’s bringing its security expertise to apply it to secured transactions on mobile devices and in the IoT. Infineon’s certified security chip solutions enable contactless data transmission aimed at increasing consumers’ acceptance of secured mobile payment.

“The success of mobile payment services depends on consumers’ confidence. Mobile payment solutions must therefore be as secure and as proven as card-based payment transactions,” said Thomas Rosteck, Vice President and General Manager of Infineon’s Secure Mobile & Transaction business. “Our products bring bank-level security to smart and mobile devices and help to make mobile payment as easy-to-use and convenient as possible.”