Who needs a physical wallet anymore? Those old things made of leather or duct tape or whatever? Eww. MasterCard is banking on the popularity of other digital wallet systems with the introduction of its new offering, the MasterPass. It doesn’t shut with velcro and you don’t need one of those chain things to keep it in your pocket. 

MasterCard already has a foothold in the mobile payment business with its PayPass Wallet, which speeds up online checkouts with a dedicated button and lets customers buy things with a tap of the credit card at certain dedicated terminals.

The new MasterPass pretty much goes around the actual checkout line and the entire process of paying up at a register, notes ABC News, as users will be able to scan barcodes and buy stuff right there in the store’s aisle by using the store’s app. No muss, no fuss, basically.

“We think merchants want to create their own unique shopping experiences, their own apps… and the idea here is, we want to offer services that make it easy for those merchants to plug in payments into those apps they create,” said Ed Olebe, SVP & Group Head at MasterCard Worldwide.

It’d be up to the retailers, basically, to integrate the MasterPass system into their apps, much like Amazon’s 1-Click ordering button. Merchants would embed the MasterPass function into their apps and allow customers who have their credit card info stored in there to just tap and buy.

The MasterPass will launch in the U.S. this summer, and will allow consumers to store any branded credit cards, debit or prepaid cards in their digital wallets.

MasterCard Rolls Out MasterPass Digital Wallet [ABC News]

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