MasterCard has taken a minority stake in C-Sam, the mobile wallet vendor. The credit card giant did not reveal the size of the stake or how much it invested in C-Sam.

The two companies also announced a global strategic partnership which builds on an agreement earlier in 2012 which was focused on African, Asia Pacific and Middle Eastern markets.

The companies will integrate MasterCard’s PayPass Wallet services with C-Sam’s platform.

The two companies have worked together on developing a mobile wallet for Starhub, the Singapore operator, which was launched in August, 2012.

C-Sam also supplied the wallet used by Isis, the US mobile payments venture, in its two-city trial that started this autumn.

The partnership enables the vendor “to more rapidly develop innovative mobile commerce products and increase the breadth and depth of our services,” said Felix Marx, C-Sam’s CEO.

The vendor supplies the back-end infrastructure needed for a mobile wallet, as well as SDKs and device software that supports transaction technologies such as NFC, QR codes, barcodes and cloud-based systems.