Mastercard Ups the Ante on QR Codes

After recently seeing how UnionPay stepped up to push EMVCo into releasing new standards for quick response (QR) code-based mobile payments, it’s likely that that point wasn’t lost on Mastercard. Indeed, the company moved to circle the wagons on this front, and offered up some recent insight into its own future plans for using QR codes in mobile payments.

The word came from a recent company press release, noting that, by August, Mastercard would offer a newly-expanded product line geared toward QR codes. Said codes could be used by both merchants and consumers alike, using a common set of specifications available worldwide.

Some reports even suggest that Mastercard was working with EMVCo on that recent QR code release UnionPay had a hand in developing, and with the new standards comes a level of consistency that should help the QR code movement advance forward.

Mastercard’s president of global enterprise risk and security, Ajay Bhalla, commented “Today’s news builds on the momentum of our QR work in India and Africa. We look forward to the adoption of the EMVCo global QR standards. In the meantime, we’ll continue to work with our customers and partners to make every device a secure way to pay and be paid.”

It’s actually not surprising to see Mastercard make a bigger push into the QR code arena, especially considering that EMVCo is partially derived from the word “Mastercard”. Mastercard is actually listed as one of the group’s owners, which means the new standard EMVCo developed would pretty much have to be part of Mastercard’s arsenal, despite reports that UnionPay led the way in development here.

With so many developing nations interested in mobile payments, QR codes are a great way to bridge the gap. Able to work on the simplest of devices, QR codes open up new possibilities in regions that may never have been able to access mobile payments by the standard smartphone means. That’s great news for anyone who wants to break into a developing nation’s markets, and explains well why not only UnionPay but everyone else was so interested in these systems.

QR codes will likely be a big part of mobile payments going forward; there’s too much potential market out there at stake to pass these up.