MasterCard Partners on Mobile Payments Program in Qatar

MasterCard announced today the first NFC-enabled payments program in Qatar, in conjunction with Qatar National Bank (QNB), Qatar Telecom (Qtel) and Oberthur Technologies.

QNB and Qtel customers in that county using the new Qtel NFC SIM will be given the option to either leverage their existing NFC PayPass capable mobile phone and sign up for a QNB PayPass-enabled Qtel SIM card, or upgrade their phone to one of the latest Blackberry models to utilize the payments service embedded on the new SIM, MasterCard said.

QNB customers will also be given the option of obtaining a "sticker" equipped with PayPass technology to affix on their existing mobile phone in order to make payments if they do not have the latest NFC capable mobile phone. Oberthur, who provides QNB's chip personalization service, helped to develop the payments application on the Qtel NFC-enabled SIM and on the MasterCard PayPass sticker.

Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio