Marion King, MasterCard’s president for the UK and Ireland has recently spoken on the possibility of a cashless society. She defended that the evolution of payments technologies will replace cash – albeit in the long-term. “There are different levels of take-up across the globe but I think that cash will increasingly be replaced, largely because of technological innovations and digital currencies via the smartphone.”, she said. She argued that, despite a global economic crisis, there is a steady rise in MasterCard’s volume of transactions, offline and online. She sees it as a true indicator of a move away from cash.
She reiterated the company’s confidence in mobile payments, with the multiplication of investments in this payment channels. Their partnership with EE to launch iZettle in the UK marks the shift to cashless payments for small retailers, the MasterCard representative explained, “Where historically it has been costly and prohibitive for these retailers to accept cards, this innovation allows them to accept card payment wherever they are by plugging in a dongle into their smartphone.”
Security is evoked as one of the many benefits of the change towards cashless payment, but data seems to be a key advantage of the move away from cash. “Card transactions provide data, and we are able to use that to help merchants and organisations plan and understand buying patterns, and whether customers are moving more towards e-commerce and if so under what circumstances. If a customer uses cash, there isn’t that data.”, Marion King said.
The MasterCard president added the important role of the ease of use in the spread of card and mobile payments and urges small retailer who have taken a cash-only approach in the past to consider new option to boost their business.
Read the original interview at Marketing Week.
