MasterPass Says ‘Hola’ to Spain (Feb. 13, 2014)
MasterCard has launched its MasterPass online shopping service in Spain, the payment card network said this week. The country becomes the fourth European market in which MasterCard is offering MasterPass to financial institutions, merchants and consumers, following rollouts in the U.K, Italy and Sweden. The service launched in Australia and Canada in early 2013, with the U.S. following soon after.
In Spain, MasterCard aims to capitalize upon high smartphone and tablet penetration, which has helped mobile shopping gain 11 percent of all online commerce in the country, according to a study by the Online Business School. “[A]ny device is becoming a shopping device,” said Ovido Eqido, country manager for MasterCard Spain. “In this context, MasterPass becomes a digital payment solution with great potential for merchants, consumers and financial institutions.”
Visa Inc. introduced its own digital wallet—known as V.me—to Spain last year. Like MasterPass, V.me stores consumer data in the cloud to enable consumers to make quick and secure purchases—especially useful when shopping on smartphones and tablets. Among the other companies seeking to capitalize on the shift to mobile shopping are Google and PayPal, both of which have developed wallets that store consumer and payment data. In October, Amazon unveiled a one-click shopping feature to enable e-commerce merchants to accept payment from customers once they login with their Amazon usernames and passwords.
