Innovative Solutions for Smart Cities in India from Mastercard India

Mastercard has showcased innovative technology solutions for building a sustainable payment ecosystem towards government’s smart city initiative. Mastercard has partnered with the Skoch Group, a think tank dealing with socio-economic issues to organise the 45^th Skoch Summit. The Summit focused on ‘Smart India, Shrestha Bharat - From Promises to Delivery’ and was held at HICC, Hyderabad on 8^th and 9^th September, 2016. 

Porush Singh, Country Corporate Officer, India and Division President, South Asia, MasterCard said, “As a global payments technology company, Mastercard has been enabling cities to become livable, sustainable and more inclusive. Mastercard is keen to partner with the Indian government for the Smart Cities vision. We can develop innovative solutions that make the lives of people and businesses easier – and that help India further strengthen its competitive position in the world economy.”

The Mastercard pavilion at the summit showcased videos and demo apps, highlighting Mastercard’s initiatives to partner with Governments and private bodies to support and complement smarter cities. Highlights of key technologies showcased were:

• Masterpass (with any bank wallet app) – An omni-channel, all-digital payment service for consumers, issuers and merchants from Mastercard. It makes life easier for the consumers, allowing them to use their mobile banking app and purchase items at physical stores using a merchant specific QR-code.
• Mastercab – Mastercab, an in-app checkout service to book and pay for cabs, enabled by Masterpass.
• Identity Check "Selfie Pay" – This new and unique mobile payment verification service from Mastercard aims to simplify the online shopping experience for consumers. All consumers need to do is use the phone camera to click a selfie as part of a two-step authentication process when shopping on the mobile
• Retail location insight - A unique tool that offers reliable insights into the sales-based performance of a retail location with mapping and reporting functionalities. Powered by MasterCard Retail Location Scores, the tool uses a fact-based approach unique to the industry, leveraging anonymous and aggregated transaction data from more than two billion cards

Commenting on the Summit, Sameer Kochhar from Skoch Group said “We are privileged to have partnered with Mastercard in organizing the two day discourse deliberating on the need and evolution of smart cities. Smart cities indeed are the future settlement hubs and possess the potential to complement socio-economic growth in a major way”

The summit witnessed participation from key dignitaries including. T. S. Vijayan, Chairman, IRDA; Gulshan Rai (National Security Advisory Board); RS Sharma, Chairman, TRAI; Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO, UIDAI and many more.