Written by Frank Hayes for StorefrontBacktalk.com on November 16th, 2011
E-Commerce has been depending on the trustworthiness of strangers for a long time—customers typing in what might easily be stolen payment-card numbers from thousands of miles away. That might be changing soon, and with a real advantage for E-tailers. On Monday (Nov. 14), MasterCard and Intel announced a push to install a contactless reader in laptops, so they’ll function as PayPass readers to take contactless payment cards—with a lot less trust required.
A MasterCard spokesman, Brian Gendron, wouldn’t commit to the card brand accepting such transactions as “card present,” at least not at this point. It’s early—MasterCard and Intel expect to get all the authentication issues nailed down by 2012, with actual payments by laptop-owning online shoppers starting shortly thereafter. But anything that uses built-in hardware to close the gulf between the retailer and the physical card should help push interchange rates down.
The MasterCard/Intel effort wouldn’t be the first try at bridging that gap. The idea is something like the PC keyboards with a built-in card-swipe slot, except with a tap instead of a swipe and the improved security designed into contactless cards. That should give the laptop a much better chance at confirming that a bona fide card (or mobile-wallet-equipped phone) has been used on the far end of the wire, especially because a card brand is behind the effort.
