Mastercard has unveiled Cloud Tap on Phone, a Cloud point-of-sale (POS) acceptance technology pilot, for small businesses.

To launch the new solution, Mastercard has partnered with white-label payment gateway solutions provider NMI and payments behemoth Global Payments.

Computer Engineering Group (CEG), an IT services provider, is the first company to pilot Mastercard’s Cloud Tap on Phone.

The Cloud Tap on Phone software is hosted on Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Small businesses use this software to turn their smartphones into a POS device, for contactless payments acceptance.

This eliminates the need for investing in hardware devices, such as a physical POS device.

Merchants can use this solution to offer curbside pickup, pay on delivery, faster checkout in-stores, and other touch-free cash alternatives.

Mastercard global head of acceptance solutions group Milan Gauder said: “Our partners are the centre of everything we do, and our trusted technology powers innovative experiences, choice, flexibility and certainty, creating the products they need.

“Mastercard’s Cloud Tap on Phone delivers on our promise of ground-breaking products and innovation.”

Cloud POS offers security, reduces development and maintenance costs, and creates scalable distribution channels by enabling instant connection with partners.

Mastercard’s pre-certified Cloud POS software development kits (SDKs) will be openly available for solution providers, fintech, acquirers and processors to leverage the tech to co-create new cloud-first products.

The Cloud POS technology and Cloud Tap on Phone’s product development was led by Mastercard Labs.

The Tap on Phone product is currently available in 16 markets across Europe, APAC, LATAM, North America and MEA regions.

Mastercard is conducting pilots in Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Poland, Kazakhstan, Romania, Canada, Belarus, Russia, Turkey, the UK, among other countries.

Mastercard will launch more pilots and deploy the solution in other markets this year.