MasterCard Backs And Partners With Mobile Banking Company mFoundry To Expand Reach Of NFC

After announcing a new partnership with Intel, MasterCard is revealing a new collaboration to help spread the use of its NFC technology through its PayPass program. The credit card giant is making a strategic investment in mFoundry, a company that powers mobile banking solutions for more than 500 banks and credit unions nationwide.

As part of the announcement, mFoundry will be offering MasterCard’s PayPass technology as a way for banks and credit unions to give their customers the option to pay for items with their mobile phones.

As you may have heard, PayPass is MasterCard’s payment method that lets you make purchases without having to swipe the magnetic strip on your card or provide your signature at PayPass enabled terminals. The technology uses NFC to transmit information.

MFoundry’s SaaS allows banks and other providers to give their customers mobile banking options, including payments. For example, mFoundry powers Starbucks’ Card Mobile. The company has capitalized on the recent growth in mobile banking. comScore recently reported that 32.5 million Americans accessed mobile banking information on their mobile devices, a 21% increase from the fourth quarter of 2010. And, almost 14 percent of all U.S. mobile subscribers now access banking information through their devices.

With the MasterCard partnership, mFoundry will allow banks to be able to offer MasterCard mobile banking options, including the use of PayPass and the NFC technology. MasterCard and mFoundry also will collaborate to provide mobile phone operators an application that supports Mobile PayPass, which will allow them to offer mobile contactless payments to their customers.

Obviously for MasterCard, the collaboration will help spread the use of its NFC technology to various banks, and thus consumers. And for mFoundry, the startup gets a strategic investment from one of the most well-known credit card companies in the world, and gets to gain some clout from the investment.