More Mobile Payments Come to Latin America (Jan. 5, 2016)
American Banknote Corp., a payment and security services provider commonly known as ABnote, says it has completed the Latin American integration of open-loop mobile payment technology from MeaWallet, a Norway-based firm. The deal opens the door for ABNote’s Latin American banking customers to offer consumers more digital payment, loyalty and couponing options, the two companies say.
Consumers using the mobile wallet program will “just tap their smartphones at the merchant NFC-enabled POS-terminal to complete the payments,” according to the companies. The open-loop mobile payment scheme initially will work with payments processed via the MasterCard and Visa networks. “This means that mobile cards issued using the solution will be accepted for contactless and remote payments at merchants around the world that accept these schemes,” ABnote says.
“The ABnote partnership with MeaWallet means that our customers will have a faster route to mobile payments, using new innovative products such as customer branded mobile wallets,” says John Ekers, global chief information officer at ABnote. “In particular, we see the exclusive cooperation now established between our two companies for Mexico, Central America and South America as an important part of our strategy to meet an increasing demand for mobile payment solutions from large players in the region.”
A look at Brazil, one of the biggest markets in Latin America, shows why the two companies are bullish on the region. In that country, 27 percent of payments are electronic—so lots of room to grow—meanwhile at least 78 percent of all Web traffic stems from smartphones, according to recent estimates.
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