MasterCard Adding Location Tech As Part of Trend Toward User-Based Card Controls

With an eye to giving credit and debit card holders a measure of greater control, MasterCard Inc. unveiled a new alert feature that provides issuers with verifiable data about a cardholder’s location. That can help prevent authorization refusals, for example, when the cardholder travels.

Available now in the United Kingdom, and later this year in the United States, the feature uses the cellular network of a participating wireless carrier to locate a mobile phone. It uses no app nor requires any action on the part of the consumer, a MasterCard spokeswoman says.

“A consumer need only provide consent once for the issuer to seamlessly enable the service,” she tells Digital Transactions News via email. “Subsequently, when they turn on their phone in their new location, the issuer is alerted through information gathered from mobile-network roaming updates, and the cardholder can then use their card without getting declined.” The service uses technology from Syniverse Technologies LLC, a Tampa, Fla.-based communications company.

In a related effort, MasterCard also is working with Zumigo Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based firm that provides mobile-security services, on a service that issuers can integrate into their mobile-banking apps to enable location sharing.

“Once the consumer has enabled the feature in the mobile app, their location is periodically shared with the issuer—allowing consumers to shop while traveling both domestically and internationally,” the MasterCard spokeswoman says. “This solution leverages the existing relationship between a bank and their customers. No information is required from the mobile network.  This capability will be available in select markets in 2016.”

Both services are aimed at the frustration cardholders can feel when having card transactions declined because the cardholder is shopping at places some distance from home. In such cases, issuers will decline transactions if they fear the card has been stolen or misplaced by the cardholder.

MasterCard also is making its Automatic Billing Updater, which provides updated card information, such as expiration dates, available globally.

MasterCard’s moves to enable greater consumer controls echoes those of other payment networks. Activity has been especially intense in allowing cardholders to disable cards after discovering they’ve been lost or stolen. Visa Inc. last week launched its Consumer Transaction Controls service, and debit network Shazam added a card-disablement feature to its Bolts app in 2015. Discover Financial Services offers a similar service, called Freeze.

Vendor Ondot Systems Inc. offers CardControl to issuers, too. Its service features the ability to switch acceptance on and off by merchant category. Other providers include Fiserv Inc., a Brookfield, Wis.-based bank processor, with its CardValet tool, and Austin, Texas-based Malauzai Software Inc.