PURCHASE, N.Y.—The combination of virtual payment cards and mobile wallets has gained further ground with the launch of a new service from Mastercard and digital card platform Extend.
The service enables the delivery of virtual cards to mobile devices, where they subsequently can be used to make contactless payments—an area of growing demand amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has “changed corporate spending patterns and given rise to hygiene concerns around traditional touch-based payments methods,” Business Travel News noted.
The service features virtual card numbers generated by payment processing technology specialist TSYS and loaded onto mobile devices via the Extend app. From there, the virtual cards flow into mobile wallets for contactless purchases.
The card numbers are tokenized by Mastercard's Digital Enablement Service, rendering them useless should they fall into the possession of fraudsters, the companies said. Cards can be issued for single-use and multiple uses, with available controls including specific time frames, amounts and approved merchant categories.
‘Tremendous Uptick’
"Over the last several years we've seen a tremendous uptick in virtual card interest across the industry, but until now, they were irrelevant for in-store purchases," said Extend CEO Andrew Jamison.
“That shift primarily was due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which many observers believe has finally broken the deadlock long plaguing contactless payment adoption: merchants were reluctant to install contactless acceptance technology without proven customer demand, while consumers saw little upside to adopting a payment method that wasn't widely accepted by retailers,” Business Travel News noted.