MasterCard invests in mFoundry

MasterCard has made an investment in mFoundry, the developer of mobile banking, payment and commerce solutions that created the Starbucks mobile payment system. MasterCard also seems to be interested in mFoundry's relationships with hundreds of banking institutions that have created their own branded apps. 

Intel Capital, Fidelity Information Services and Motorola Mobility also are said to be part of the funding round for mFoundry. Previous investors include PayPal and NCR. The list of backers illustrates some of the dimensions of the developing mobile commerce ecosystem, which includes mobile handset, payment clearing network, retailer terminal, mobile wallet and mobile advertising and marketing functions as well.

For the past five years mFoundry has been developing mobile banking applications for banks that typically enable users to check their balances and conduct other financial services from their phone.



Going forward, MasterCard wants to work with mFoundry to enable those applications to make payments at the register using MasterCard’s near-field communication (NFC) technology called "PayPass." MasterCard invests in mFoundry