MasterCard debuted a new way to purchase bobbleheads at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto today, using a combination of interactive touchscreens, technology from Toronto startup Tulip, and its own MasterPass platform.
The company answered calls to make it easier and more enjoyable to purchase merchandise during a game, and has set up an area near Gate 1 at the ACC to promote its Priceless Toronto campaign. A core tenet of this is a large interactive touchscreen where users can select a bobblehead, from the Raptor himself to the Maple Leaf’s Carlton, and hand off the purchase to their smartphone. 
The entire process takes only a few minutes, and the initial reaction, especially from kids, has been extremely positive. Once the desired bobblehead is chosen, users enter a phone number or email address, neither of which is stored in the system, which facilitates the completion of the transaction.
The SMS or email contains a unique link that opens a web browser to a shopping cart. Users with an individual MasterCard or a MasterPass account (which can securely store the credentials of many cards from a variety of issuers) can then go through the secure payment process to complete the transaction. MasterPass launched in Canada just under a year ago, and has seen excellent traction from vendors like Porter, Wagjag and TeamBuy.
While the interactive showcase is just a small part of MasterCard’s increasingly-present Canadian marketing strategy, and merely gives a taste of the company’s mobile payment aspirations, the bobblehead kiosk is a traction-free example of what can be accomplished with an “omni-channel” multi-screen shopping experience.
