Person-to-person and business-to-consumer funds transfers delivered to a recipient’s debit account in 30 minutes or less have been available from Mastercard Send and Visa Direct since 2016. Last year, transactions in the US exceeded 1.26 billion from the issuers shown here.
Spectra Technologies, a Hong Kong-based payment terminal manufacturer, has launched a low-cost Android-based model called the Tap-POS. The device, which uses phone-type hardware, is primarily intended for contactless payments. It ships without magstripe or contactless chip readers.
Consumer, small business and commercial credit, debit and prepaid cards tied to the 50 largest issuers in Europe are ranked on pages 6 and 7. Those cards include Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Maestro, Diners Club, UnionPay and general purpose domestic-market-only brands.
Credit, debit and prepaid consumer and commercial general purpose card products issued in the United States generated a combined $9.175 trillion in purchase volume at merchants in 2021, up 24.0% from 2020. That purchase volume included Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express cards in addition to Star, Nyce, Pulse, Accel, Interlink and other cards connected to PIN-based debit networks.
Blockchain analytics and cryptocurrency intelligence is the expertise of CipherTrace, which was acquired by Mastercard last year. CipherTrace had more than 50 customers worldwide among financial institutions, digital asset exchanges and governments when Mastercard bought the company.
The 36 largest merchant acquirers in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region based on the number of Visa and Mastercard purchase transactions each handled in 2021 are ranked in the table on page 6. Collectively, those acquirers, which represented 16 countries, processed $221.55 billion in purchase volume from 5.09 billion Visa and Mastercard transactions.
Brazil-based Payface piloted its biometric payment engine in 2019 with restaurant Biezza in a closed-loop system and launched it for open network payments last year with that country’s top merchant acquirer Cielo. Mastercard has selected Payface as a vendor in its global Biometric Checkout Program.
Credit, debit and prepaid cards issued in Europe with Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Diners Club brands generated $4.217 trillion in purchase volume for goods and services in 2021. On a local currency basis, this was an increase of 22.1% over 2020.
Should it come to fruition, the metaverse (an immersive online virtual world), which operates in Web 3.0, will need a way for people to make card, account-to-account and cryptocurrency payments to businesses. Worldline, the fourth largest merchant acquirer in Europe, has created a virtual showroom inside Decentraland, one of the virtual worlds currently comprising the metaverse, to explore what real-world payment services for virtual consumers (avatars) could look like.
Recognizing the opportunity to further reduce friction in the payment process as well as to provide consumers with another method of payment, Mastercard has created the Biometric Checkout Program.
