MasterCard has announced that it will let software developers use the company's proprietary payment technology to develop online Apps and Mobile Phone Apps. Open Application Programming Interfaces or Open APIs will be released later this year for independent software developers. These Open APIs will allow mobile Apps or Web based apps to directly access MasterCard's payment systems.
MasterCard had already launched the ATM Hunter iPhone app and now wants to introduce Open APIs for independent developers. A new portal would be opened for providing technical documentation, sample source code, software development kits, and other testing tools for developers. That portal will also have developer forums where developers will get to interact with MasterCard engineers.
About 20 platforms have been identified and services such as online games, merchant e-commerce sites, payroll systems and mobile applications would be opened up to the developers. MasterCard said that the company's developers had internally developed iPhone apps and other programs, and now the same process would be opened up to the developer community, thereby expanding payment options.
MasterCard is trying to leapfrog VISA, which came up with a special iPhone accessory In2Pay that consists of a case and pairing app for paying through the iPhone.
At the end of the day, users will get to see more applications with MasterCard and/or VISA payment options for different platforms. The only concern here is the security of the user's account information. We presume that would be taken care of by MasterCard and VISA.
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