What’s Next: 4 Things I Learned at #MWC16

When I arrived in Barcelona, my back didn’t hurt and my feet weren’t blistered, but I also didn’t know what a great experience I would have.

I spent the past week with MasterCard at Mobile World Congress displaying our latest products and services designed to enable safe, secure, convenient payments no matter how or where you are looking to pay.

So what does that mean? I’ll take you through a recap of our time at the Congress and what we discovered along the way:

• Everyone likes taking Selfies – Admit it, you’ve taken a selfie before. Even if you were reluctant, we’ve all done it. And we’ve turned that into a way to authorize payments, which has taken on the name, “selfie pay” since you can essentially use your face to pay.
• Financial Inclusion is Key – MasterCard’s commitment is to connect 500 million to the financial system by 2020. Our President of International Markets, Ann Cairns, delivered a keynote on the topic.
• Digital Tech Enables Smart Cities – There is an opportunity to make cities better and to make better cities. It costs cities 15 percent of a public transport fare just to collect the fare – by leveraging mobile and contactless payments, cities save money and catching a ride becomes a breeze.
• Every Device will be a Commerce Device – The Internet of Things is becoming the Internet of Commerce. Any connected device can become payments-enabled from your watch to your refrigerator.

If you missed any of the action from Barcelona, you can catch up below:

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We asked: Where will digital tech have biggest impact? Here’s how over 5.3k responded:

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