Mastercard’s Masterpass payment platform has found another home, this time in the heart of South Africa thanks to a partnership with one of Africa’s mobile communications companies as the credit card provider attempts to gain ground on its competitors by going global.

The partnership will see Masterpass’ payment options brought to Vodacom’s platforms. The partnership also marks another instance of Masterpass expanding on a global level.

“Consumers want to shop and pay in a way that suits their lifestyle. Whether it’s in-store, online or on-the-go, the payment experience needs to be simple and fast, while being safe and secure. This is the first Masterpass in-app feature to go live in South Africa, enabling consumers to make everyday payments like airtime top-up without having to leave the app,” says Mark Elliott, division president of Mastercard, South Africa.

Masterpass
With the popularity of mobile payments rising slowly in the US, other parts of the world have begun to take to the technology much more quickly.

Places such as India and Japan make great use of multiple mobile payments options.

South Africa is another such country that is embracing mobile payments, and a great example is a new partnership between Vodacom and Mastercard.

The partnership brings Mastercard’s global mobile payment option, Masterpass, to the My Vodacom mobile application for South African customers.

With the integration with Masterpass, Vodacom customers can now purchase communications products and packages through the My Vodacom app using Masterpass.

Now, consumers can order SMS and data bundles as well as airtime for their mobile devices all through the My Vodacom app and with the ease and efficiency provided by Masterpass.

By speeding up the purchasing process by virtue of letting customers save their payment information with Masterpass, Vodacom is significantly improving the mobile purchasing experience for its consumers.

Global mobile
Mastercard has long been a dominant force in the credit card world, but the brand has only recently begun to make headway into mobile payments as a service for its customers.

But in the brief time that Mastercard has been pushing Masterpass, the platform has already been brought to a wide variety of brands and services from many different industries.

For example, Masterpass was recently integrated into the purchasing platform for JetBlue (see story). With this combination, customers can quickly purchase flight tickets using Masterpass.

While Masterpass has only supported contactless mobile payments since August, Mastercard is continuing to expand and develop its capabilities in a wide variety of use cases (see story).

With this new partnership under its belt, Mastercard is continuing its effort to push Masterpass on a global level.

“At Vodacom, we’re always looking for innovative ways to improve our customer experience. Integrating Masterpass into My Vodacom is part of the payments innovation journey Vodacom is driving to make in-app commerce as safe, easy and convenient as possible,” says Steve Briggs, executive head of digital product and Operations at Vodacom.