Dubai: The technology company is investing in a broad range of emerging technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence in different partnerships around the world.
“It is still in an experimental stage at this point and we have a partnership with Emirates NBD for ‘future of shopping’,” he said.
It doesn’t take a tremendous leap of imagination to see how such technology could infiltrate e-commerce, he said, and added that the new technologies can show consumers a new way to peruse and pay for goods.
Mastercard debuted Priceless Cities virtual reality at CES 2016 and partnered with Samsung to introduce ‘Groceries by Mastercard’, a new app which enables consumers to order groceries directly from Samsung’s new Family Hub refrigerator.
Payments giant plans to ramp up its work combining virtual reality, augmented reality and commerce for the first time on a global scale as consumers show greater interest in technologies helping to make shopping faster, easier and more secure.
The latest Mastercard global digital payments study found the topic of virtual ¬reality generated the most positive sentiment globally and in the Asia Pacific region among emerging technology topics.
Miebach said that VR and AR could offer highly direct and personalised exchanges that would recast the retail and consumer relationship. The march to scale though could take about five years.
