The mobile payment market seems to be expanding every day and the Mobile World Congress was the stage for two major payment players to push the industry even deeper. At the global conference for mobile innovation, MasterCard and Visa introduced their next steps into the mCommerce.

MasterCard is launching MasterPass, an enhanced version of its mobile wallet Paypass. Visa, on the other hand, announced a partnership with a group of tech providers including Samsung that will expand its mobile payment program and enable third parties to connect to the systems.

A recent article from ClickZ examines these announcements and what they could mean for the future of the mCommerce industry.

"We all know that the center of commerce will be these devices," Jim McCarthy, head of global product at Visa, said during the conference. "It's not just about using these devices to pay, but also the fact that today in the Visa ecosystem we have 30 million merchants but the fact is there are over 7 billion of these devices that can be turned into terminals."

Visa currently has 200,000 active merchant locations that are equipped with NFC readers in the U.S. and another 600,000 in Europe. MasterCard's new solution will be launched worldwide by the end of the year and will be able to handle NFC, QR codes, tags and mobile devices at points of sale. The company now has 27 financial institutions, 21 technology partners and 16 merchants on board and looks to expand to more than 5,900.

MasterCard also released the results of a survey that found 58 percent of early adopters have a favorable rating of mobile payments while those yet to adopt have a more positive outlook of around 76 percent.

It seems clear that mobile payment technology is coming and all merchants need to be ready.