MasterCard joins the NZ mobile wallet party - provides Semble platform

MasterCard Mobile Transaction Solutions (MTS) has today announced that it is providing the mobile wallet solution for Semble to enable secure contactless payments with a smartphone in New Zealand.

As reported by Computerworld New Zealand, the country’s first mobile wallet is now available nationwide, following a joint venture between Paymark, the company that processes the majority of EFTPOS transactions in New Zealand, and the country’s mobile network operators: Vodafone, 2degrees and Spark, alongside banks ASB and BNZ.

Once activated, consumers are able to purchase goods using their Android smartphones and in the very near future, the ability to add additional bank cards, applications and services such as public transport, loyalty, coupons and vouchers, will be available.

“Semble is a fantastic, highly innovative product and a testament to the collaboration of the key players involved in its development,” says Felix Marx, group executive, MasterCard Mobile Transaction Solutions.

“We are therefore very proud that MasterCard mobile wallet technology is powering the platform and creating a simple, secure and centralised way to make mobile payments.

“And, we look forward to bringing additional applications to the people of New Zealand in the future.”

According to Semble CEO Rob Ellis, New Zealanders are increasingly relying on smartphones to manage their lives; “so it makes sense to move the physical contents of our wallets to our smartphones.”

“We have worked closely with the MTS team and in their former capacity as C-SAM over the past two years as we developed Semble and look forward to continuing to work with them to offer additional applications and services to our customers in the future,” he adds.

Available on a range of Android NFC-enabled (near field communication) smartphones, personal user information is stored securely within individual SIM cards.

To set up, users need to request a Semble ready SIM from their mobile provider, download the Semble app from Google Play, add their cards and make their first payment.

Transactions work in exactly the same way as with physical bank cards, and all purchases appear on your bank statement as they do now.

The mobile wallet is based on MasterCard’s Mobile Transaction Platform (MTP), providing a single entry point for the delivery of the banks services through a common wallet application.

C-SAM was acquired by MasterCard at the beginning of 2014, and is now called MasterCard Mobile Transaction Solutions (MTS).