Mastercard Expands Live Music Experience Offering

Mastercard is giving cardholders a new way to enjoy live music beginning early next year.

The company is expanding its live music experiences for cardholders to several concert venues across the United States, according to a Thursday (Nov. 14) press release. Through priceless.com, eligible card holders from around the world can access benefits like pre-sale tickets and Priceless Experiences.

“Music has the unique power to connect us, inspire us and create unforgettable memories,” Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard, said in the release. “Our new partnership with premier venues and festivals across the U.S. underscores our commitment to bringing cardholders closer to their passion for music.”

The collaboration extends to venues that include the Brooklyn Bowl, which has locations in Brooklyn, Las Vegas, Nashville and Philadelphia, as well as The Capitol Theater in New York and Moody Center in Austin, the release said. Mastercard plans to announce partnerships with music festivals next year.

In other Mastercard news, the company announced Wednesday (Nov. 13) that it plans to phase out the need to enter card numbers, static passwords and one-time codes for consumers making online purchases by the end of the decade.

Instead, the company will employ a new process that combines tokenization and biometric authentication to make online checkout smoother and more secure.

“Just like the transition from signing and swiping to tapping cards, we’re now moving from manual entry and passwords to seamless and secure payments in just a few clicks,” Mastercard Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert said in a news release. “With this shift, we are protecting sensitive data through enhanced encryption and tokenization technologies.”

Mastercard said its vision of passwordless and card numberless commerce is already becoming a reality in major markets, as its tokenization technology has reduced cart abandonment and increased transaction approvals by 3 to 6 percentage points, while also lowering the risk of fraud.

The payments sector needs to stay focused on improving security while also preventing friction as a range of payment methods has added more complexity to the mobile checkout experience, Jennifer Marriner, Mastercard’s executive vice president of global acceptance solutions, told PYMNTS this month.

“We’re committed to making checkout faster and more secure, especially by minimizing manual entry, leveraging tokenization and employing biometric authentication,” Marriner said.