Over the past few years, MasterCard has been growing its mobile commerce presence. Additionally, the company has plans to roll out its own mobile wallet to better equip consumers.

Mobile Commerce Daily’s Rimma Kats interviewed Alfredo Gangotena, chief marketing officer of MasterCard, Purchase, NY, about the current state of mobile commerce and the company’s future mobile payment plans.

What is the current state of mobile payments?
With mobile payments, our point of view is that it would take a lot of time. The physical card will not go away.

If marketers want to establish NFC in all of these locations, it is going to take time.

Who knows how many years it might take – five, ten. Time will tell. But, will it happen? Yes.

How is MasterCard ramping up its mobile commerce and payments strategy?
We want to embed MasterCard within your mobile phone. We have announced the launch of the MasterCard wallet and PayPass wallet and that essentially allows you to choose and pick from different cards you have and the ones you are using now.

All of your details are in there. It allows you to make contactless payments. For example, if you are in New York, you can take a taxi and pay for it using your smartphone.

There is also our Priceless app. We are working on it at the moment. It is available on tablets, but not on mobile devices yet. It is just a matter of time that we bring that into the space.

Priceless lets you to browse and then choose your experience no matter where you live.

We have launched that in 14 cities around the world and we will continue that expansion.

Everyone nowadays is rolling out their mobile wallets. Do you think it is becoming too much?
At the end of the day, who wants to have 15 wallets?

We want to create a mobile wallet that lets consumer put whatever card they have.

I believe the marketplace will see several attempts.

Security is a big issue. How will financial institutions overcome that?
If you feel safe about your own bank, there is no reason to not be safe about your mobile phone.

It is incremental security that prevents people from breaking into a wallet. We use the latest fraud technology to prevent any issues.

What do you have coming up next?
We’re driving awareness for our Priceless campaign.

We launched a total of six cities in the first year and we are now introducing another eight, including Paris, which is live now, Buenos Aires, Lima, Rio de Janeiro , Miami, Los Angeles, Moscow, Istanbul, Singapore and Sidney.

We will have more in 2013.

Priceless allows people to not only feel good about what they do at home, but as soon as we bring the app to the mobile phone it will be your travel companion.

Final Take
Rimma Kats is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York