Wirecard and Mastercard announced plans to expand their existing partnership to promote digital, contactless payments via wearables. As of today (July 17), the expanded partnership will immediately make Wirecard available in Germany via Garmin Pay. The firms said additional projects are in the works that will make mobile payments available via smartwatch.
Garmin Pay customers can already make smartwatch-based payments with boon in Germany and six other European countries without using their bank, if they own a digital boon Mastercard. The companies said boon is the fastest-growing mobile payment solution in Europe since 2015 and the first digital mobile payments solution to operate independent of a bank.
Garmin Pay currently works with the GPS multisport watches vívoactive 3 and vívoactive 3 Music, the Forerunner 645 and Forerunner 645 Music GPS fitness watches, as well as the fenix 5 Plus series.
Georg Von Waldenfels, executive vice president of consumer solutions at Wirecard, said over the next five to 10 years, payment processes at the point of sale will undergo a digital revolution. He believes boon users will be able to use their digital boon Mastercards with their favorite wireless devices while jogging or doing any other form of exercise. Additionally, Waldenfels said the firm wants to make these added-value items available to as many consumers as possible.
The partnership marks the latest move by Wirecard, which entered a deal earlier this year with B2B platform Mercateo to connect buyers, retailers and manufacturers so they could provide same-day processing and more easily onboard users.
In January, Wirecard paired with Moonrise to provide same-day payment to gig workers using the Moonrise platform.
Mastercard, in August of 2017, entered an agreement with Fitbit to offer contactless payments on that company’s Ionic smartwatch, which was launched at the same time as the Mastercard announcement.
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