PURCHASE, NY — If you’re still convinced credit cards are not part of a vast conspiracy to take over the planet, witness MasterCard’s latest coup: On Sunday, the company announced the launch of a new service that will allow consumers to use their cell phones to charge purchases to their MasterCards.Called Over-the-Air Provisioning, the service can drop MasterCard’s PayPass program onto any cell phone equipped with Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Instead of swiping his or her card over a reader, consumers merely need to punch a code into their cell phones. Voilà. Now indebtedness to the financial overlords is even easier.
The service has proved popular in Japan, where almost everyone is tech-crazy. American consumers and banks, however, seem to view the opportunity as evidence of a particularly threatening kind of voodoo.
MasterCard is unfazed by Americans’ reluctance to embrace its bold, new creation. Spokesman James Anderson recently told Reuters the company plans to skip the consumer-test phase and go directly to a national full-program rollout. MasterCard is in talks with banks about the service, Anderson indicated, although no launch date has been set.
The biggest hurdle so far is the unavailability of NFC-equipped cell phones, but that could change soon. Some reports have suggested NFC will be installed on one-third of all mobile devices within the next five years. Nokia last year began putting its eggs in the NFC basket.
Security is another stumbling block for suspicious Americans who currently prefer a bulge in their back pockets to getting too comfy with mobile devices. However, if tough security measures — possibly including implanted tethers so the darn phones don’t walk off by themselves — can be built in, consumers may warm up to the service enough to leave bulky wallets at home.
