The Canadian arms of Mastercard Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. will now be giving each other a leg up after their parent companies extended their partnership north this week.
The partnership, revealed Thursday, will add Mastercard support to online merchants that use PayPal, and allow brick-and-mortar retailers using Mastercard’s mobile payment solutions to accept funds through PayPal Wallet.
Building on a U.S. agreement announced last year, the expansion extends not only to Canada, but Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Africa as well.
In an Oct. 5 statement, PayPal chief commercial officer Gary Marino called the news “the latest in a line of great partnership developments with Mastercard.”
“Together we expect to accelerate digital payment adoption across the world, improve the payment experience online, in-app and in store, and empower millions of consumers to seamlessly manage and move their money,” he said.
Meanwhile Ann Cairns, Mastercard’s president of international markets, said the expanded partnership “affirms our commitment to our billions of cardholders across the globe to deliver the simple, speedy and secure payment experience they’ve come to expect from Mastercard, across devices and channels.”
Like the companies’ previous agreements, the expansion will create several new joint growth opportunities, Microsoft and PayPal said, including the addition of Mastercard’s tokenization services to PayPal, which will allow compatible retailers to accept PayPal Wallet for in-store purchases (6.5 million worldwide, according to Mastercard); giving PayPal customers the option to choose Mastercard as their default payment method; or empowering them to use mobile banking apps to add Mastercard credit to their PayPal accounts.
Despite the expanding number of mobile payment options, recent research by ITBusiness.ca into Canada’s mobile payment space found that only 12 per cent of Canadian smartphone owners have used their phones to make an NFC payment.