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Mastercard Partners Tappy to Enable Payment Via Wearables

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Mastercard Incorporated (MA - Free Report) , the global payments processor company, has partnered with Tappy Technologies, Inc. a provider of digital payment solution for wearables.

Per the deal, Mastercard’s customers will be able to make payment via any fashion accessory, which has Mastercard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) tokenization platform. MDES will tokenize payment credentials across mechanical and digital watches. In order to facilitate the payment via wearables, Tappy Technology will embed contactless payment chips into any fashion accessory, thus transforming them into payment-enabled wearables.  

The trend of making payments via wearables is fast catching up among fashion-conscious consumers, who look for ease and flexibility to make payments.

To cash in on this growing trend, Timex Group will debut its first payment-enabled timepieces in the first half of 2020.

Mastercard’s wearable enabled payments program is an extension of the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) and the Digital Enablement Express (Express) program, which brings to fruition the vision that every device will be a commerce device. Through MDES and Express, any accessory, wearable or device can be payment-enabled and quickly scaled to millions of MasterCard accounts. The company foresees fast-paced growth in payments via wearables given the popularity of Internet of Things (IoT).  

Notably, IoT has taken the payments process to the next level with a broad and diverse ecosystem of Internet-connected devices, such as wearables, connected cars, and smart home devices from just mobile phones, cards, and point-of-sale devices. The need of the hour is seamless payment through a number of touchpoints.

Mastercard seeks to increase its IoT partnerships by which it can grow its business volume and strengthen its brand name. It is estimated that more than 20.4 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020.

Another payment processor, Visa Inc. (V - Free Report) , is also trying to make it big in the wearable payments space and has struck deals with National Bank of Greece and Caixa Bank in 2018 to enable customers carry out transactions through their jewelry and watches.

Mastercard carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Other stocks worth considering are Global Payments Inc. (GPN - Free Report) and Green Dot Corp. (GDOT - Free Report) . Each of these stocks carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and have surpassed estimates in each of the last four reported quarters, with an average positive surprise of 2.42% and 23.82%, respectively.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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