MasterCard has announced an investment in and partnership with mobile wallet and transactions platform provider C-SAM. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Founded in 1998, Chicago-based C-SAM basically powers mobile wallets on the backend. This includes back-end management infrastructure, software development kits and on-device software that support secure proximity near field communications (NFC), bar code, QR code and cloud-based transactions. The C-SAM platform also supports customer-specific offers, loyalty incentives, banking, bill-pay options and non-financial secure transactions.
According to the release, C-SAM will use MasterCard’s digital payment infrastructure, including the credit card company’s own digital PayPass Wallet Services. The companies had previously had a marketing partnership that was formed earlier this year.
Customers include Discover, Axis Bank, StarHub and a number of others.
MasterCard doesn’t fund a large amount of companies so while this is a minority investment, it’s interesting that the company is betting on mobile wallet infrastructure. The credit card giant also recently backed mFoundry, and bought personalized offers company Truaxis (formerly BillShrink).
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Leena Rao is currently a Senior Writer at Fortune Magazine.
Leena had a brief stint at Google Ventures as an Operating Partner.
Leena’s first role out of journalism school was at TechCrunch which she joined in 2008. She rose through the ranks becoming the Managing Editor for TechCrunch and a voice at TechCrunch Disrupt.
She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City.
She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was the captain of the women’s varsity tennis team. She has also contributed technology content for Oprah.com.