Mastercard brings card benefits to life with a new augmented reality experience | SiliconANGLE

Upon launching the app, card users can scan their card with a mobile device and enter a 360-degree virtual environment. Once activated, a series of interactive portals will guide them into “rooms” displaying different interactive 3D objects that represent card benefits.

For example, a user could launch the AR app on their phone, jump through a portal in the virtual space and find a set of golf clubs resting on the ground near them in the AR experience. Upon focusing on the golf clubs, they discover that it’s part of a promotion for Priceless Golf Benefits and tapping on the clubs triggers a pop-up screen that takes them to details about the benefits.

AR experiences open up new opportunities for users to interact with information and the medium of AR is highly immersive. Mastercard hopes that this drives better understanding and use of benefits offered by its services to customers.

“At Mastercard, we’re using our technology and solutions to deliver multi-sensory experiences for consumers every day – whether they’re shopping, taking transit, or exploring the card benefits they care about,” said Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and communications officer at Mastercard. “By leveraging an intuitive AR design, cardholders can now easily find and fully explore their benefits that otherwise might have been overlooked.”

A report from J.D. Power in 2018 revealed that benefits and rewards continue to drive customer satisfaction with cards, but only a third of all credit card holders completely understand all the associated benefits.

The new Mastercard AR experience would give a fresh look to otherwise dry, 2D media pages that could better engage customers in seeking to use those benefits.

“Digital-first consumers are the first to explore and use technology-enabled touchpoints across the entire payments journey,” said Tim Sloane, vice president at Mercator Advisory Group. “With the new Mastercard benefits app, these cardholders will experience an immersive and truly unique environment where every tap delivers the value and benefits of their card in a fashion never experienced before.”

The app is expected to launch in the Apple App Store, for iPhones, in the second quarter of 2020. Additional regions and device capabilities, including Android, will be coming later in the year.