Telus Corp. customers will now have one less thing to remember before they head on trips to the U.S.
On Thursday, the wireless carrier giant announced it was partnering with Syniverse and MasterCard to introduce a new service. For Telus customers who might be purchasing something in the U.S., the service will show whether their mobile device is in the same location as where the sale is taking place.
This new service is powered by Syniverse, a company that has created a “Mobile Intelligence Portal” to pinpoint customers’ locations, where they regularly go, their habits in using their mobile devices, and how they typically make purchases. The company already operates in almost 200 countries and territories, connecting more than 1,500 mobile service providers, enterprises, and Internet service providers.
The new service can be really handy for Telus customers, given credit card users typically need to call their providers to let them know they’ll be travelling before they actually cross the border and make purchases. If they forget to make that call, they can often get their cards declined, said Hany Fam, president of MasterCard Enterprise Partnerships.
“Today, up to 80 per cent of the payment transactions that are declined while people travel abroad are actually legitimate, creating a real headache for consumers, retailers and financial institutions,” Fam said in a statement.
“Combining the speed and intelligence of our global network with mobile context data can help us further improve the user experience for cardholders by ensuring legitimate transactions are approved without the consumer having to take additional steps.”
This isn’t the first time Telus has introduced a new feature to attract and retain customers who often head south of the border. The wireless carrier also provides a tool called Travel Tracker, which allows 4G device users to keep track of their data usage in real time while they’re outside Canada. The tool sends customers text messages to tell them when their device is roaming, thanks to applications running in the background, and it will give them a summary of their data usage while abroad, once they’ve returned to Canada.