Mastercard brings contactless payment system to Uruguay
Given the world trend towards electronic money, Mastercard offers alternatives such as the contactless system in Uruguay and promises more technological advances
Uruguay enjoys the Mastercard contactless payment system as an alternative to the worldwide trend of reducing the use of cash. The company that provides credit and debit cards promises to bring other innovations based on artificial intelligence, blockchain technology and authentication to the South American country.
Among the benefits of the contactless card payment system are speed, security and convenience. “It works with NFC technology (Near Field Communication), through which the customer makes a transaction by approaching the card to the digital payment terminal (POS).”
Federico Gulland, commercial director of Mastercard for Uruguay, affirmed that the adoption plan of this new technology is aggressive: “In this first year the firm expects to achieve that more than 70% of the merchants that accept cards in Uruguay offer this payment method.”
Mastercard foresee that by mid 2019 all new cards will have this technology in order to soon renew the entire ecosystem in the country. The measure will benefit both citizens and issuers and merchants.
At present, around 20,000 businesses in Uruguay accept the new technology. On the other hand, the only issuers of these contactless cards are Prex, Midinero and Banco República.
In the procedure with this technology, data such as the name of the cardholder or the three-digit security code is not issued, according to MasterCard representatives, because when the card is brought closer to the reader, a unique use code is sent and allows to identify the transaction as well as the account information.
M.Pino
Source: negocios.elpais.com.uy
