STOCKHOLM: Verizon Business and Mastercard Inc announced a partnership on Tuesday to employ 5G and wireless technology for contactless payments and to offer a self-checkout service in retail establishments. Verizon and other telecommunications corporations are looking to expand into new businesses ranging from robotics to finance that they believe will profit from the rapid adoption of 5G technology.
The Verizon Business partnership with Mastercard seeks to enable merchants to accept client payments without the use of point-of-sale (POS) equipment by utilizing 5G cellphones and near-field communication (NFC) technology.
Similar to what Amazon achieved with Go shops, the businesses plan to combine computer vision technology and cloud computing to allow automatic checkout at unattended retail outlets.
With only 29 locations so far, the Go concept has not been widely adopted, which Verizon Business revenue head Sowmyanarayan Sampath attributes to the hefty expenses of establishing the requisite technology.
Verizon Business, on the other hand, hopes to reduce such costs significantly, according to Sampath, with the business also collaborating with retail technology expert AiFi to develop autonomous shopping experiences using computer vision and artificial intelligence.
“We have everything we need between MasterCard, AiFi, and us,” Sampath stated, without giving any financial information.
He did not say when merchants will be able to use the technology, but he did say that “the most of the action will be in North America.”
(Editing by David Goodman; reporting by Supantha Mukherjee, European Technology & Telecoms Correspondent, located in Stockholm)/n
