MasterCard backs ecommerce research lab

MasterCard has pumped $5m into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab to research payment technologies for ecommerce services.

The MasterCard Future of Transactions Laboratory will explore a number of technologies in the payments and ecommerce process including biometric authentication and remote transponders. The latter use sensor-based technology which is used by some toll roads in the US to automatically debit or credit drivers' payment cards mounted on car windshields.

MasterCard said it is also looking at ways of enabling consumers to pay for goods using smartcard chip technology embedded into mobile phones and personal digital assistants.

The payment card company will also become a sponsor for the institute's Centre for eBusiness, where academics explore the future of mobile shopping and electronic exchanges, and examine the use of software agents that can automate some or all the steps of transactions. For example, they could suggest which products to buy and trawl the web looking for best deals.

Art Kranzley, senior vice president of electronic commerce and emerging technologies at MasterCard, said: "Consumers, merchants and banks are interacting in increasingly diverse ways, which involve the use of a number of different computing devices in virtually any type of network environment."