MasterCard shows off the future of payment (and it’s not just Google Wallet)

Image courtesy of Engadget

Google Wallet, a mobile payment service announced in May, lets you pay on the go by tapping a phone to an intelligent terminal. If a splashy video tour from Monday is anything to go by, it should forever change – for the better – how we as a society pay for goods and services. Initial implementation requires a MasterCard PayPass terminal which accepts digital receipts and coupons from mobile devices, over the air, and then carries out transactions with financial institutions.

MasterCard today shed more light on a mobile application they’ve been developing in partnership with Google. A quick visit to Engadget which has a cool video tour proves the app works as advertised: Tap a phone to a terminal and that’s it. The app will allow users to set spending limits, set alerts for overseas activity and restrict purchases across categories so, say, your spouse can only pay for dinning, movie tickets and gas, excluding clothes, make up and other impulse purchases.

The app currently works on Sprint’s Nexus S 4G but they are planning on supporting more devices with an NFC chip. The software will also enable MasterCard’s QkR platform for mobile purchasing that supports QR codes, television audio signals encoded with purchase data and even tiny NFC chips embedded into real-world objects, such as fast-food tabletops. These QkR-supported features should be realized across Android, iOS, Windows Phone Mango and BlackBerry platforms, MasterCard promises.