Mobile banking apps got a major injection of payments innovation thanks to MasterCard Inc. announcing its partnership with mFoundry today. 

The partnership allows mFoundry bank clients to let their customers pay for items with their mobile phones through the vendor’s integration with MasterCard’s Tap & Go PayPass, which uses NFC technology. This arrangement gives banks the ability to boast their own NFC-based mobile payments, a functionality that has been largely untapped by banks to date.

By teaming with mFoundry, the credit card giant is instantly expanding its NFC reach to banks and will help drive contactless payments in America. Already, mFoundry provides mobile banking services for nearly 600 banks and credit unions. Plus, MasterCard said the duo will provide mobile phone operators an application that supports PayPass.

Because of digital wallet revenue possibilities, true engagement with partnerships between unlikely players in the payments ecosystem like MasterCard and mFoundry is finally taking place, and will continue to take place. Furthermore, this particular announcement also points to how MasterCard is on-board with multiple digital wallets, as it has already shown through its support of both Isis and Google Wallet. At a recent payments conference, Mario Shiliashki, senior vice president and group head of US Emerging Payments Lead at MasterCard, explained why it was seeking out more partners:

For us, it is through partnerships that we are hoping to garner more data. In order to make customer and retailer relationships better, they must be based on data. …[And ultimately,] the more value we drive in the ecosystem through the intelligence device is how quickly we get away from cash and checks.

Beyond the partnership news, MasterCard also announced that it made a strategic investment in mFoundry, though it did not disclose the amount.

Meanwhile, mFoundry said it will continue to develop new products that won’t be exclusive to NFC technology. Drew Sievers, chief executive of mFoundry, blogged:

Finally, our partnership with MasterCard won’t be limited to NFC solutions. We will also be working closely with MasterCard to bring many of their card-related services to our mobile banking customers. This means that you can expect to see new product features from mFoundry supporting services like fraud prevention, offer delivery, money movement, and more.