Intel And MasterCard Team Up For Ultrabook-Involved Mobile Payments

Mobile payments, hooray! They seem to be all the rage these days, and now Intel and MasterCard are announcing a "multi-year strategic collaboration to further enhance the security and consumer payment experience for online shopping." What's that translate to? We're told that this collaboration will combine MasterCard's expertise in payment processing and commerce with Intel's strengths in silicon innovation and chip-based security. It is designed to provide more options for a safer and simpler checkout process for online merchants and consumers using Ultrabook devices and future generations of Intel-based PCs.

Ultrabooks? Mobile payments? Huh! The new partnership will involve PayPass and Intel's Identity Protection Technology, the latter of which can enable consumers to use strong two-factor authentication and hardware-based display protection. This provides increased online security against malware. Additionally, when used with an Intel Identity Protection Technology-enabled reader, consumers will be able to pay for online purchases with a simple tap of their PayPass-enabled card, tag, or smart phone on an Ultrabook device.

Are ultrabooks the new Nexus S? We doubt too many folks will use their notebooks as Google Wallets, but who knows -- with phones getting bigger and notebooks getting smaller, maybe we're heading to some strange new parallel payment universe.