MANILA, Philippines – Credit card giant MasterCard has tapped a Philippine-based firm in developing a mobile phone payment system to be deployed initially in Brazil.

The mobile payment service, called MasterCard Mobile Payments Gateway, was developed by Smart Hub, a subsidiary of mobile telecommunications firm Smart Communications.

The said services will be deployed through two local banks, Itau Unibanco and Redecard, and will be delivered via Brazilian telecommunications firm Vivo.

The service allows issuers, acquirers, merchants, and mobile network operators to provide customized mobile payment services.

End-users of this service will be able to pay for a wide variety of services and products using their mobile phones. These include bills payment, fund transfer, remittances, person-to-person transfers, payroll, ATM transactions, and mobile phone credit reloading, among others.

After the pilot stage, MasterCard plans to introduce the service to selected countries.

“Successful growth of mobile payments around the world requires participation, communication and collaboration among all members of the mobile payments value chain,” according to Napoleon Nazareno, president and CEO of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company and Smart Communications.