MasterCard drives expansion of contactless payments in Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa

MasterCard's PayPass contactless payment network now boasts nearly 700,000 merchant locations in 51 countries as of Q4 2012.

Growth data reflects a strong demand from consumers for fast and convenient alternative to cash for everyday purchases in region, including those in emerging markets like Vietnam, which this month launched contactless payments for the first time.

South Africa, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, and United Arab Emirates were credited as key contributors to growth in the APMEA region, and hotbeds for innovation in contactless payments.

•In United Arab Emirates, MasterCard collaborated with Network International, the region's leading acquirer, to expand its contactless payments infrastructure, installing MasterCard PayPass terminals across more than 1000 stores in 2012, and paving the way for contactless mobile payments in the region.

•In Australia, more than one-in-ten card transactions under $100 is now being made with PayPass.

•In Singapore, transactions made using PayPass at last year's Great Singapore Sale (GSS) grew 100-fold, with total spend up by more than 54%.

•In New Zealand, all new consumer credit and debit cards issued are enabled with PayPass. Consumer-led demand for contactless technology drove uptake among the country's most popular retailers, including Bunnings, Kmart, The Warehouse, Resene, Repco, and BP.

Strong growth in merchant locations was made possible through strategic collaborations, including those with Coles and Woolworths supermarkets in Australia, NTT DOCOMO in Japan, and E.Sun Bank in Taiwan. Merchants are also seeing real impact to their bottom line.

Early last year, MasterCard worked with E.Sun Bank, one of Taiwan's top tier issuers and a top chain hypermarket to roll out a new MasterCard PayPass co-branded card aimed at driving higher performance of their customer loyalty programme.

In less than one year, E.Sun Bank had issued 600,000 cards. PayPass functionalities have helped increase customer loyalty, delivering 15% higher spend, 20% less cardholder attrition and 10% more frequent usage than the bank's average.


Innovation in Contactless Payments to Drive Future Growth
In addition to exponential increases in adoption, innovation in contactless payments underpinned the growth of PayPass across the region in the last year will continue to be a driver in coming months. Highlights of contactless payments innovation in the last year included:

•Innovation
oIn the Middle East, Fransabank's MasterCard PayPass Card won the 'Best Contactless Innovation Award in the Middle East'. Bank Audi also launched the Bank Audi ABC MasterCard Credit Card, Lebanon's first co-branded card offered by a bank in collaboration with a prominent shopping mall, which offers PayPass technology to allow cardholders to Tap & Go as they make purchases in the mall.

•In South Africa, the rollout of Standard Bank's Muvo card with PayPass, brought innovative technology to EThekwini Municipality's bus transit system. The Gauteng province's Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system launched a new Automatic Fare Collection process to its commuters who are now issued with MasterCard Paypass smart cards to pay for their bus fare, and the MyConnect Paypass card was launched by MasterCard and Absa bank for use by commuters in the Western Cape's MyCiti BRT system.

•In East Africa MasterCard has partnered with Equity Bank to roll-out five million EMV and PayPass -enabled debit and prepaid cards in Kenya over the next 18 months. Thereafter the cards will be rolled out in Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and South Sudan. The agreement, which was announced in January 2013, came soon after MasterCard partnered with East Africa's largest retailer, Nakumatt, to introduce the multi-currency EMV MasterCard PayPass Prepaid loyalty card to over one million of its loyalty programme members in the coming months. The collaboration signals the largest prepaid merchant agreement for MasterCard in the Middle East and Africa region, to date.

•Australia's largest bank, Commonwealth Bank in conjunction with MasterCard launched Commbank Kaching, the first Australian iPhone application of its kind to facilitate peer to peer payments and use MasterCard PayPass to allow customers to simply tap their iPhone to pay anywhere PayPass is accepted.

•In Japan, MasterCard was selected by NTT DOCOMO, the country's leading mobile operator, to help connect their domestic payments network to the world, and enable consumers in Japan using MasterCard PayPass Ready Smartphones to make contactless payments while traveling the world, anywhere PayPass is accepted.

•In Singapore, MasterCard collaborated with DBS, EZ-Link and Starhub to launch a Near Field Communication (NFC) app 'SmartWallet', a seamless and secure digital wallet service.

•In Singapore, MasterCard, along with M1 and EZ-Link jointly launched the first Telco-Prepaid MasterCard PayPass card that rewards the cardholder's spending on the card with airtime bonus.