NFC TimesThe premier source for news, analysis and commentary on
Near Field Communication and all contactless technology

MasterCard Worldwide is reorganizing its mobile-payments effort and team, planning to focus on what it calls “digital convergence,” with the aim of “enabling every connected device to be a commerce device,” NFC Times has learned.

Merchant locations accepting PayPass cards and applications on mobile devices stood at nearly 700,000 globally at the end of 2012, MasterCard Worldwide announced this week.

Retail locations accepting MasterCard PayPass contactless payment doubled in Europe in 2012, according to MasterCard Worldwide, a development that helps clear a path for more rollouts of NFC payment.

MasterCard Worldwide and U.S.-based mobile-wallet software supplier C-SAM today announced a partnership and investment by MasterCard, expanding on their earlier working relationship.

PARIS, France – MasterCard Worldwide and ING bank have launched a trial in the Netherlands enabling bank staffers to shop on the Web and then make online payments with a PayPass application stored on a secure element in their NFC phones.

PayPal has an advantage over another big Internet player, Google, in rolling out payments at the physical point of sale because it already has tens of millions of payments customers on file with billions in their accounts “ready to spend,” contends Don Kingsborough, PayPal’s vice president for retail and prepaid products.

Orange Poland is rolling out a prepaid card, called Orange Cash, which is to be issued by BRE

Polish mobile operators Orange and T-Mobile this week are unveiling their NFC services, which will focus on contactless payment supporting MasterCard PayPass.

Japan’s largest telco, NTT DoCoMo, has begun to make a key piece of its strategy for NFC known, announcing deals with MasterCard Worldwide and South Korea’s KT Corp. to enable subscribers to make payments when they roam in other countries.

France’s No. 2 mobile operator SFR is the latest telco with plans to get into the payments market, today announcing it would roll out a contactless co-branded prepaid card with the help of MasterCard Worldwide, with the intention of expanding the service to NFC phones.