KUALA LUMPUR: Payments technology company Mastercard and Tappy Technologies, a world-leading wearable token service provider, yesterday announced a strategic partnership that will see the two companies collaborating to enable contactless payments through fashion wearables by embedding their respective technologies into a range of accessories, starting with analogue watches by Timex Group.
Tappy’s patented contactless payment chips can be embedded into virtually any fashion accessory, transforming them into payment-enabled wearables.
By partnering with Mastercard, Tappy can integrate its technology platform with Mastercard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) to tokenise payment credentials when consumers use their mechanical or digital watch or wearable to make a purchase at any merchant that accepts Mastercard contactless payments.
The first fashion-forward brand to embed these payment technologies into their wearables is Timex Group.
Starting with timepieces, Timex Group will debut its payment-enabled range in the first half of 2020 across a variety of collections and straps, which will be sold separately and made available for purchase on Timex.com. The range will be sold in Singapore first, followed by Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia and other Southeast Asia markets.
Mastercard has been actively fostering ties with technology providers such as Tappy through Mastercard Accelerate — a global platform that gives fintechs and emerging technology brands access to everything they need to grow quickly.
The Accelerate program that connected Mastercard with Tappy is Mastercard Engage — an initiative that identifies qualified technology partners and connects them with thousands of Mastercard customers to help scale their business, quickly and efficiently.
