Vodafone, Sumitomo Corporation, and Mastercard team up to advance the economy of things

• New embedded payments technologywill launch in the UK and roll out across Europe, enabling autonomous payments between machines in the freight, shipping, fleet and logistics industries.

Pairpoint – Vodafone and Sumitomo Corporation’s Economy of Things business – and Mastercard today announced a new collaboration and payments service that will allow fleet, freight, shipping, and logistics operators to authorise machines to trade with other machines on their behalf.

The new service, which connects Pairpoint’s platform with Mastercard Gateway, will allow fleet operators’ vehicles to make authorised direct payments at charging or fuel stations, and freight companies to enable payments for pre-approved connections along a route, such as port charges, handling and storage, among a variety of other applications.

Jorge Bento, Chief Executive Officer of Pairpoint said: “Contactless payments using smartphones are commonplace; the next step is to allow devices and vehicles to directly pick up the bill on a user’s behalf. This is possible through the partnership between Vodafone, Sumitomo, and Mastercard. Together, we can offer customers a secure, yet simple way, to authorise their machines to make online transactions whilst generating new growth opportunities for businesses and advancing the integration of IoT and blockchains.”

Pairpoint-enabled devices will be assigned standards-based digital identities stored within their SIMs, which Pairpoint can use to enable interactions and trades with other permissioned devices on its platform. The service builds on existing Internet of Things (IoT) technology that enables unattended connected devices to transmit and receive data, allowing a shipping container, for example, to autonomously report its weight and free capacity.

The new solution will be globally scalable, available to all telecommunications players, and support payment credentials running on all major card networks. It will become available in the UK later this year, followed by a progressive roll out across Europe.

Maria Parpou, Executive Vice President, Mastercard Gateway said: “The explosion of digital payments has unlocked the potential for commerce across and between any device. We look forward to working closely with Vodafone and Sumitomo to help business customers unlock the potential of Economy of Things technologies.”

The collaboration leverages the geographical scale of Vodafone’s global IoT platform, one of the world’s largest with over 187 million connections, Sumitomo’s industrial strength in 66 countries and regions, and Mastercard Gateway’s payment acceptance solutions connecting more than 200 financial institutions across 80+ markets worldwide.