Mastercard And Verizon Announce Partnership For 5G Contactless Payments

Mastercard and Verizon announced Tuesday a partnership focused on 5G contactless payments for consumers as well as small- and medium-sized businesses. They hope to have some innovations from the partnership by 2023. The collaboration aims to enable businesses to use emerging payment technologies to turn smartphones into cash registers, to turn wearables like watches as payment devices, and to facilitate touchless retail similar to Amazon Go stores. “A large retailer can easily do this. A small business, how are they going to do it? That’s exactly what this will bring; 5G allows us to deliver the full experience,” Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach first told CNBC, ahead of the announcement. “For example, I choose an item in a shop, but actually they don’t have the color I like. So I’m going to have it sent home, and it is going to be paid once it arrives, all of that is coming together and we with 5G will be enabling this.” Read more at CNBC.