MasterCard’s Fashion-Forward Digital Payments Hackathon

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MasterCard is collaborating with The New School’s Parsons School of Design to bring together the worlds of payment technology and fashion in a joint-sponsored Fashion and Design Hack, the company announced Monday (Feb. 29).

The event will feature teams of students competing to develop, build and present connected commerce prototypes that feature embedded payments functionality in their products, new designs or concepts.

“As the world becomes more and more connected, the way consumers interact and transact is transforming,” Sherri Haymond, MasterCard’s SVP of digital payments and labs, said in a press release. “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.”

Three teams of Parsons’ design students were selected to participate in the Fashion and Design Hack and will compete for $15,000 in prize money and the chance to present their creations at MasterCard industry events. MasterCard said the engagement with Parsons will help to push forward its vision to “bring to consumers a new generation of connected commerce experiences.”

“How people and products interact is changing rapidly,” said Burak Cakmak, dean of Parsons School of Fashion at The New School. “More and more, companies are turning to design to help build a more positive consumer experience. By partnering with Parsons, MasterCard is engaging with our students’ creative and innovative approaches to design viable solutions.”

Fashion designer Adam Selman, who will also sit on the panel of judges for the competition, added: “Technology is playing a greater and greater role in all aspects of our lives, including fashion. The connected device revolution won’t necessarily be limited to our wrists. And we need creative minds to push the boundaries of their imagination and develop design concepts that are truly inventive. Through this collaboration, the new generation of design students will have the opportunity to bring to life concepts that incorporate cutting-edge design with the latest in payments technology.”

In another recent move supporting MasterCard’s digital philosophy that every device — watches, wearables, keychains, dresses, sunglasses, gloves, rings and even refrigerators – can be a connected device, the company partnered with Coin.

Coin is best known as the all-in-one connected card (credit, debit, gift, loyalty and membership cards) that consumers can use in place of the stack of cards they carry in their wallets. But its latest deal with MasterCard will bring commerce to the next generation of wearables by leveraging Coin’s patented technology platform that miniaturizes the payments technology needed to make wearables functional and interoperable.