There happens to be a few people who still prefer depositing and receiving their checks the old school way – by hand. And while no one will complain about you preferring a direct connection with your cash, one of the biggest drawbacks of doing such a thing is that you’d have to wait for the check to clear or the transfer to go through successfully. And it’s even much more annoying for small businesses to get access to it. MasterCard had figured out a creative way to solve your inconvenient methods of accessing your funds.
A new program called MasterCard Send allows you and your business to securely exchange assets in just a few minutes. No longer will you need to wait for your check to clear or for the transfer to go through. Most businesses will use MasterCard Send to quickly send customer’s refunds, claims payments and rebates, but MasterCard wants everyday people to take advantage of their new system as well. You can send money to your friends and family and make a purchase at a participating retailer, without even being a MasterCard member.
To use MasterCard Send all you need to do is connect your debit card to it so that you can get access to your funds. From there you can “Send” your finances to whomever you like, and they won’t even need a bank account to collect your funds. Payment services like Western Union can be used right away. There are also rumors of a MasterCard Send app that could be headed to your iPhone and/or Android device, but no word yet from MasterCard about it. Currently MasterCard Send is available now here in the US, and companies like Berkshire Hathaway and FreeShipping.com have happily joined on the bandwagon and will support the MasterCard Send service. Who knows where this venture will lead. Maybe some future competition will arise as well. I’d expect PayPal, Venmo, American Express and Visa to come up with a plan of their own.
[Featured Image Credit: Håkan Dahlström/Flickr]
