Executives in the banking, retail, and technology industries acknowledge that mobile payments must tantalize consumers with targeted coupons and offers to demonstrate they are more valuable than an ordinary plastic card, which has been a fast and reliable payment method for about 50 years.
Able to carry many times more information than an ordinary magnetic-stripe card, one smart card can be used for a variety of transactions that currently require a variety of cards.
China, where few ordinary citizens have a credit card (indeed, where credit-card-style revolving consumer lending is illegal), is MasterCard's second-largest market after America.