MasterCard Incorporated (NYSE ticker symbol: MA) has decided it wants a slice of that daily dealing pie. The company plans on enhancing their business to business partnerships by offering its bank and merchant clients a way to deliver targeted deal offers to consumers. Wouldn’t that be ironic if at some point in time that consumers, instead of using a MasterCard to pay for a Groupon; would be using a MasterCard to pay for a MasterVoucher?

For months now we at Daily Deal Media have reiterated our beliefs as well as the beliefs of others regarding the simplicity in duplicating the daily deal platform. Common sense dictates that an industry that has multi-billion dollar potential will have a plethora of new and existing businesses clamoring to get a share of the action. MasterCard is a tad late to the party as American Express Company (NYSE ticker symbol AXP) has already partnered with social media networking sites like Foursquare and Twitter. Those partnerships allow cardholders to load deals directly to their card accounts.

MasterCard will be serving as the connection between daily dealers, deal aggregators and those banks that issue MasterCards. The company’s goal is to provide additional value to the cardholder. The company has forged partnerships of its own with Local Offer Network and others. The MasterCard enhanced service is expected to deliver “relevant and geo-targeted offers” and be available by the end of the second quarter.

MasterCard and its larger competitor Visa Incorporated (NYSE ticker symbol: V) have continued to expand in the face of a brutal U.S. and global economy. Shares of MA are currently trading at $437 up a whopping 70% from the $256 low established during the past 52 weeks. Both companies are pushing more consumer credit and debit cards as well as trying to get more merchants to accept them.

If the U.S. does fall into another economic situation whether those events are triggered on our own soil or are based on some of the snafus going on over in Europe, the house of credit and debit cards will come tumbling down. I can safely bet that very few of MasterCard’s customers have seen their paychecks appreciate 70% in the past year. I also doubt that the Americans making those monthly credit card payments (with interest) will appreciate the bonuses that the MasterCard and Visa management team will receive at their (the consumers) expense.

Source: MarketWatch

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2012 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Daily Deals, Digital, Marketing 101. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.