Transaction Trending Podcast EP7: Contactless Payments in the United States with Matthew Donnelly, FreedomPay

It’s been four years since the first NFC-enabled smartphones with mobile wallets entered the marketplace.

But contactless payments technology has been around much longer than Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay.  The Mobil oil company introduced its Speedpass mobile payment device at U.S. gas stations in 1997.  FreedomPay tested a mobile payments wand in 2004 with McDonalds. The first contactless credit card was introduced by Barclays in the UK in 2007.

Today, in Europe, consumers tap their contactless cards to pay millions of times every day.  Meanwhile, here in the U.S., consumers and merchants have yet to make contactless payments part of their daily lives.

On this episode of Transaction Trending, a conversation on contactless – and what it will take for this fast and secure technology to grow here at home. Joining ETA CEO Jason Oxman is Matt Donnelly, Senior Vice President of Security and Solutions at FreedomPay.

An early pioneer in contactless payments, FreedomPay was founded in 2000, and provides advanced payment solutions to merchants across healthcare and hospitality. And FreedomPay is sponsoring the first-ever Contactless Payments Zone on the TRANSACT show floor, happening April 17-19th in Las Vegas.

Matt’s work at FreedomPay spans multiple areas of expertise. With a background in Systems Engineering and computer science, Matt has developed point-to-point encryption for EMV and contactless payment solutions. He is an expert in payments and works closely with processors, gateways, financial institutions, software companies and developers, to keep FreedomPay’s products up-to-date. Matt was recently honored in ETA’s first-ever 40 Under 40 class.

Take a listen here, or check out Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher or SoundCloud to listen and subscribe.

FreedomPay will be sponsoring the Contactless Zone and will be exhibiting at TRANSACT, the world’s premier payments technology event, April 17-19 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Click here to learn more and to register.