Verizon Business, Mastercard Join Up To Spur Payments Innovation

A couple of big players — New York City’s Verizon and Purchase, N.Y.-based Mastercard — are hooking up to work on innovations in the payments industry. An emailed press release to PYMNTS said this work would range from contactless shopping and autonomous checkout technology to cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) systems.

The overall goal is to power the financial technology (FinTech), payments and banking industries and deliver products that will provide automation and commerce-related products for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

In addition, the release said that Mastercard and Verizon Business would work to deliver innovations that would be scalable and “drive the industry forward.” This would include marrying up Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to “real-time edge computing.”

“Business needs and consumer demands constantly fluctuate,” said Sampath Sowmyanarayan, chief revenue officer, Verizon Business. “Critical components of long-term success are the ability to remain agile and align with strategic financial and payments partners that have the tools and capabilities to drive industries forward.”

The goal of the new partnership, he added, is to “create game-changing solutions.”

Linda Kirkpatrick, president of North America for Mastercard, said that “through this collaboration, Mastercard and Verizon’s platforms, which connect billions of consumers, businesses, banks and governments around the world, will be a force in driving transformational change.”

There’s a sea change going on as consumers and businesses make their way into the digital future. PYMNTS’ research shows that more than 70 percent of consumers plan to keep their digital habits even after the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs.

“I don’t see us ever going back to what we were used to before,” said Johan Gerber, Mastercard’s executive vice president of security and cyber innovation. He told PYMNTS that, if there’s a silver lining to the pandemic, it’s that “we’ve taken the hardships and helped accelerate innovation.”

Technology and the ever-increasing deluge of data are giving a boost to the rise of the IoT, he added. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are helping to create more personalized experiences.