Mastercard throws weight behind EU Green Paper on mobile payments
In response to the European Commission’s Green Paper on electronic payments, published today, Mastercard is the first major payment company to officially lend support to the campaign.
The goal of the paper is to expand electronic payments to help European businesses grow, and consumers to shop easily and safely online, instore and via their mobile devices.
In mobile payments, credit card companies might be a third wheel
If there's one thing major mobile carriers don't like to do, it's work together. But that appears to be what they're doing in the mobile payment space. Considering how tight the market is, that's a move credit card companies might not be too happy about. Because while credit card companies may need carriers to get into mobile payments, they may also soon learn those same carriers don't need them.
MasterCard courts developers, but should it?
Online payments behemoth PayPal thinks developers are key in its quest for world domination. Late last year, it launched a portfolio of new APIs that PayPal hopes will give developers the ability to create applications that extend PayPal's footprint into markets in which it believes its payment solutions could be better utilized.
But if the credit card associations have their way, PayPal will have to compete for the best developers.
Why has Google Checkout dropped Maestro?
Google announced last week that it would not be accepting Maestro cards as a payment method through Google Checkout, though it didn't explain the reasons for its decision.
On the face of it, it seems strange to deter potential customers by not offering as many payment methods as possible, especially one as popular as Maestro (it claims 540m cardholders worldwide) so why has this decision been made?
