MasterCard, Gwen Stefani tout 'Priceless Surprises' with Apple Pay

Apple's mobile payment partners continued their marketing onslaught on Monday as MasterCard, the world's second-largest credit card provider, released a new 30-second television ad featuring Apple Pay and female rocker Gwen Stefani.

The spot shows Stefani, armed with a "Surprise launcher," bombarding consumers who use their MasterCard-branded card via Apple Pay with free gifts. A handbag, a golf trip, and tickets to a Gwen Stefani concert among the gifts shown.

According to MasterCard, their partnership with Stefani will be wide-ranging, from "private performances, exclusive access to co-created content and unique experiences."

"Gwen Stefani's personal brand, consumer appeal and sheer energy are what make her an ideal partner to serve as an ambassador for our Priceless Surprises platform," MasterCard CMO Raja Rajamannar said in a release. "This platform has really taken hold and is inspiring a movement of Priceless Surprises whereby we're providing unexpected surprises to our cardholders and in turn they are sharing surprises with others in their lives. With Gwen's help we hope to further this movement."

It is unclear what, if any, input Apple had into the partnership. Apple is said to retain creative control over any advertisements featuring its new payment platform, with marketing czar Phil Schiller personally approving storyboards.

"Our concepts went to Phil, our storyboards went to Phil and someone from the brand team was on the shoot, so they were involved there too," Chase marketing executive Susan Canavari said of the production of the bank's own Apple Pay-focused spot.

17 Comments

ericthehalfbee 4489 comments · 13 Years

About 9 years ago

Does anyone need anymore proof that Apple Pay offers a significant security benefit to banks/CC companies? They're actually spending their own money encouraging people to use Apple Pay. This despite it costing them 0.15% on every transaction.

MacPro 19838 comments · 18 Years

[quote name="EricTheHalfBee" url="/t/183788/mastercard-gwen-stefani-tout-priceless-surprises-with-apple-pay#post_2649161"]Does anyone need anymore proof that Apple Pay offers a significant security benefit to banks/CC companies? They're actually spending their own money encouraging people to use Apple Pay. This despite it costing them 0.15% on every transaction. [/quote] Good point. I was shocked to read the cost if fraud in the US alone, ?Pay could dramatically help the overall economy I would think. BTW she is one very talented lady.

indyfx 321 comments · 14 Years

Quote:

Originally Posted by digitalclips Good point. I was shocked to read the cost if fraud in the US alone, ?Pay could dramatically help the overall economy I would think.

BTW she is one very talented lady.

And she taught a generation how to spell bananas ;-)

leavingthebigg 1291 comments · 11 Years

I wonder how PayPal will respond to this? The same goes for Samsung with its swipe finger print sensor. I should not forget Google with its Google Wallet

Originally Posted by leavingthebigG

I wonder how PayPal will respond to this? The same goes for Samsung with its swipe finger print sensor. I should not forget Google with its Google Wallet

Google is now in a terrible position. They could change the underlying architecture of Wallet so it uses the same tokenization system that Apple Pay uses. This would give them increased security.

However, it would change two other features about Wallet. First it will no longer work with ANY card, but only cards from participating financial institutions. Secondly, and the real biggie for Google, is they would lose their ability to mine user purchase data. And let's face it, Google didn't create Wallet out of the goodness of their hearts - they created it as yet another source of information for them to mine.