RBL, Zomato and Mastercard to launch new co-branded credit cards

Mastercard is banking big on its co-branded card in partnership with Zomato and RBL, in a bid to tap the potential of online food delivery market, which has been expanding beyond big cities.

The ‘Edition Cards’ will offer a host of benefits for cardholders every time they use Zomato or spend online and offline. The co-branded card, which comes in two variants — Edition and Edition Classic, will offer benefits such as Zomato Gold membership, cash back as well as airport lounge access.

“We started (the co-branded cards programme) three years ago... one of the reasons you're seeing more of these launches is because we’re talking directly to the merchants,” said Rajeev Kumar, senior vice-president, market development, South Asia, Mastercard.

US payments giant Mastercard invests in Indian firm Pine Labs

Pine Labs, a digital retail payments company, on Friday announced an undisclosed investment by US-based payments technology company Mastercard. The investment is part of a partnership to continue the rapid growth of convenient electronic payment options for consumers across the region. The collaboration will deliver an extensive range of card and real-time payments-based installment financing at checkout – in-store and online.

Together, the companies will offer a suite of value-added services, including Pine Labs’ end-to-end stored value solutions which will replace the paper ones now widely used by companies, retailers and people in South Asia and many other markets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“This relationship is a great validation of the top-quality products that Pine Labs delivers to merchants,” said Lokvir Kapoor, founder and chairman of Pine Labs. “Together, we have a unique opportunity to use Mastercard’s global presence and technology infrastructure to enhance our growth and enable us to meet the growing needs of customers in India and beyond.”

From its beginnings as an offline retail payment provider a decade ago, Pine Labs has evolved into offering payment acceptance technology, stored value products, in-store consumer credit and other merchant solutions in India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Today, it processes payments of $30 billion per year and serves some 140,000 merchants across about 450,000 network points.

“Smart devices are transforming how people shop. With this partnership, we’re continuing to build innovative solutions and provide people with new ways to pay right at their fingertips,” said Ari Sarker, co-president for Asia Pacific at Mastercard. “By joining forces with Pine Labs, we are reinforcing our strategy to deliver choice to consumers and to be the partner of choice for our customers in South Asia and around the world.”

The market opportunity in India for installment-based payments on consumer goods will hit $16.9 billion in 2021 and is expected to jump to $52.5 billion in 2025, according to a study published in May 2019 by PwC and the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India.

Mastercard to invest $1 bn in India over 3 years towards tech development

Global payments company Mastercard has planned to invest nearly $1 billion in India over the next three years towards the development of new technologies and products.

"The proposed investment will be made over a period of three years in our India operations, which includes an R&D facility at Pune and another centre at Vadodara,” Mastercard vice president (customer delivery) Amitabh Khanna told Business Standard here on Friday.

He informed both of these facilities catered to the company's global operations, of which Vadodara provided the backend multiple payments support. He said the company was looking to expanding the Pune centre.

Khanna noted that Mastercard, as a technology driven global entity, was keen to evolve by offering more customer centric and value added services using the digital platform.

Besides, the company is also working closely with technology and financial startups in the country by focusing on the innovation and digital payments matrices under its flagship 'Start Path' programme, he added.

Meanwhile, Mastercard has launched its ‘Team Cashless India’ programme to engage with merchants and consumers across the country to create awareness about the benefits of digital payments and grow the acceptance infrastructure.

The company is targetting at equipping 10 million merchants in India with digital payments acceptance capabilities in near future.

Apart from roping in top cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni to augment its reach, Mastercard has partnered with the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), acquirer banks and fintech companies to support nominated merchants to deploy digital payments acceptance infrastructure.

He said Mastercard will provide select nominated merchants and consumers a chance to join Dhoni’s Team Cashless India.

“So far, we have already launched this programme in Jaipur, Nagpur, Ranchi and now Lucknow,” Khanna said adding more cities, including Guwahati, would be covered in different phases going forward so as to cover all the key geographies in the tier II and III towns.

He stressed there was a need to create awareness among general public and also merchants with regards to the digital payments space, including their consumer and merchant rights.

Nearly 92 per cent of the merchants in India fell under the micro category, which offers a huge potential for the growth of the digital payments universe.

He further said Mastercard was also working with the mobile phone services companies for their digital wallets and payments.

Replying to a question, Khanna said the digital payments in India was slowly gaining traction, especially after the November 2016 demonetisation and growing awareness, especially among the youth.

“The category grew 6-7 per cent in 2018-19 over the previous financial year 2017-18 and we are seeing a continuous upsurge in digital payments in the country,” he claimed.

Mastercard’s global payments processing network comprises consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories.

Mastercard, Federal Bank join hands to make digital transactions safer

Global payments technology major Mastercard has joined hands with Federal Bank to provide an additional layer of security for digital transactions.

Mastercard has entered into a partnership with Federal Bank to offer identity check to the bank's cardholders, it said in an announcement.

Mastercard Identity Check is a global authentication program that uses the latest authentication standards of EMV 3-D Secure to provide an additional layer of security for digital transactions and facilitate higher approval rates, improving the authentication experience for merchants, issuers and cardholders.

It provides banks with a secure and user-friendly way to authenticate cardholders without the use of static passwords, increasing approval rates.

The facility decreases online shopping cart abandonment, reduces fraud and improves conversion rates for e-commerce merchants. Implementation in other regions has shown an increase in digital transaction approvals of nearly 13 per cent.

"We believe that this new solution will provide a seamless experience and will find instant affinity among our Mastercard cardholders," said Shalini Warrier, chief operating officer, Federal Bank.

The launch of Identity Check program by Federal Bank and Mastercard will go a long way in providing ease of payments with advanced security to shoppers, said Govind Setlur, chief executive officer, Wibmo, payment solutions partner for Federal Bank.

"Mastercard is committed to creating innovative payments solutions that deliver enhanced safety and security at every touchpoint, to enable simple, frictionless consumer experiences," said Sujay Vasudevan, vice-president, cyber & intelligence solutions, South Asia, Mastercard.

Mastercard says it will meet Dec-end target for data localisation in India

Mastercard is confident of completing its data localisation requirements in India by the end of this year. However, says the card payments major, restricting data flows in digital transactions will affect the quality of fraud detection and assessment.

“We are totally committed. In fact, we are in full execution mode...And, we remain completely committed to the end of the year (deadline) that we have given to the Reserve Bank of India. So, I don't see a challenge on the question of data localisation," said Ari Sarker, its Asia-Pacific co-president.

However, he adds, this restricting of cross-border data flow and storing data only in India will impact fraud detection and management.

As an example, says Mastercard, it stores only aggregate and anonymised data, such as the amount spent on a transaction, the account number and so on. If an Indian travels abroad the card gets compromised there, and the fraudster uses these credentials to withdraw money from different ATMs in different country locations, it will be difficult for the person to know on a real-time basis that such fraud is happening.

Similarly, if a fraud trend is detected in different countries and Indian transaction data is disconnected from world data, fraud detection engines here will end up getting built only on local trends.

"Our data scientists tell us that for the sake of accuracy of the trend, you need 13 months of data — then, you can really see how behaviour patterns actually shift. That's the historical perspective you need to create...our view on that (data localisation) is it's actually not in India's interest," Sarker said.

New ID check

Mastercard will go live on Google Pay, the information technology giant's payments app, launched first in India as Google Tez in 2017. "We're going to be live with Google in the first quarter (of the next financial year). The essence is tokenised credentials or pass-through credentials working through Google Pay. The reason we're going first quarter is also because we're also delivering our ID Check capability together with it. It will be a better product capability once we launch through Google Pay," Sarker said.

Last month, Google Pay launched a feature called tokenised cards. This will let users add debit and credit cards to the Google Pay application, which has so far worked only on the Unified Payments Platform in India.