Friday, September 16, 2011

Visa, Mastercard to dominate mobile money?

In developed markets, their moves into the mobile payments space have been defensive, in an effort to prevent newcomers from eroding their market share.

In the emerging markets matters might be different. Even in these early days of industry fragmentation, it isn’t difficult to foresee a time when the card payments companies such as Visa and MasterCard will dominate.

In developing markets, Visa and MasterCard are taking different approaches. Visa and MasterCard have taken slightly different approaches thus far.

MasterCard has been busy setting up bilateral partnerships and joint ventures in different markets, such as The Philippines (Smart Hub) and Latin America (Telefónica/ Movistar). Its JV with Smart Hub will power the technical payments platform for its partnerships.

It has also launched a virtual debit card linked to a mobile wallet in Kenya (Airtel). The JV with Telefónica is particularly interesting given that no one has yet made serious inroads into the Latin American market.

Visa has gone a different route in purchasing Fundamo outright. Fundamo is the market leader in mobile payment platforms by deployments.

Visa, Mastercard to dominate mobile money?

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