‘Gold standard’ Australia to move to smartphone swiping

Australia was quick to introduce tap-and-go technology, now it’s set to replace the card with the phone.

While early adopters have been doing this for some time, swiping your smartphone to complete transactions is the future, according to Mastercard.

"Tapping a card provides a great experience. Is tapping a phone so much better? So, the phone, in my mind, is a computer, so you can add a lot more value to the experience than you can with a piece of plastic," chief innovation officer, Garry Lyons said.

"That's the exciting part of the journey ahead, when you can do things like integrate some of our capabilities like pay with points into the mobile experience, and a whole slew of other things.

"We hold Australia up as the gold standard globally when it comes to contactless payments."

We hold Australia up as the gold standard globally when it comes to contactless payments.

Sydney Morning Herald estimates only 1% of in-store payments are finalised by smartphone tap-and-go, but country manager for Mastercard Australia, Andrew Cartwright, says the landscape will look "completely different" within the next two years.

ANZ has already done a deal with tech-giant Apple for Apple Pay, while apps like Walmart Pay are attracting tens of thousands of new users a day.

On top of smartphone swiping, there will be a range of alternate payment options including voice-based personal assistants, through social media, or augmented reality programs.

Mastercard’s augmented reality system with Google Home allows people to shop by speaking to a virtual assistant – similar to the chatbots in the US.

"Who knows how consumers are going to want to pay in the future, whether they want to pay from their tablet, from their car, from their fridge, or they want to engage with their virtual assistant," Mr Lyons said. "What we want to do is we want to enable payments."

Mr Lyons spoke of the potential in May last year.

"A stat I use everywhere around the world is that 70 per cent of all MasterCard transactions in Australia under $100 are contactless payments," Mr Lyons told the Australian Financial Review at the time.

"For consumers now to decide they're going to adopt mobile payments it has to provide them more value than what they are getting today with contactless cards… this could be something like the ability to leave your wallet at home, but we also need to think about what more we can do and what value can be added to the experience."