We went to Mastercard's tech showcase, which featured biometric sensors and shrimp-tracking blockchain. It's part of a push to embrace a future without cards.

• Mastercard hosted a technology showcase at the NYSE in New York last week. We sat down with Craig Vosberg, president of Mastercard North America, to discuss the firm's focus on technology.
• Mastercard has launched Mastercard Track Business Payment Service, which is a digital business-to-business payment service aimed at cutting reliance on old-school methods like checks. It also announced a partnership with blockchain company R3.
• The company is looking into blockchain that it says can provide transparency into the supply chain of a given product. It's also developing biometric security features in its cards and mobile offerings.
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Mastercard, which refers to itself as a digital payment company, has done some rebranding.

Early this year, the company announced it would drop the word "Mastercard" from its logo, instead hoping for brand recognition of its two intersecting circles. This redesign signaled a desire to be seen as more of a fintech firm, as opposed to simply a payments company.

And at a technology showcase at the New York Stock Exchange last week, Mastercard featured demonstrations of some of its latest innovations.

The company also unveiled two new initiatives just ahead of the event: the launch of Mastercard Track Business Payment Service, and a partnership with blockchain software company R3.

We talked with Craig Vosberg, president of Mastercard North America, on Thursday to discuss the future of the payments business.

"It's a B2B2C business," said Vosberg. "We're partnering with the B's in the middle."

"Behind the scenes, payments is very complicated," he said. Mastercard is focused on ensuring the C's, meaning consumers, have as seamless an experience as possible when they transact, he said.

Read more: We spoke with MoneyGram execs about the company's push into digital P2P payments and how it's playing catch-up with Venmo

The new Mastercard Track service looks to simplify and digitize business-to-business (B2B) payments. Often, payments made between small business buyers and sellers are still managed through invoices and paper checks, delaying a seller's ability to get paid. Mastercard Track is addressing this problem by offering a central payments platform to connect buyers and sellers.

In the business-to-consumer (B2C) market, Mastercard has established partnerships with Apple and Venmo to launch branded cards. Vosberg explained the importance of building relationships with companies like Apple that sell their own services.

Mastercard's new partnership with blockchain software company R3, meanwhile, appears aimed at catching up with Visa in the digital B2B payments space. Visa last year launched B2B Connect, a payments platform that uses blockchain to simplify cross-border B2B transactions.

Mastercard has 2.5 billion cards in circulation as of the second quarter, a 6% increase year over year. The company's revenue and income also increased over that period. Though there are more Visa credit cards in circulation (3.4 billion), merchants tend to be agnostic, accepting both Visa and Mastercard.

At the showcase, hosted at the New York Stock Exchange, Mastercard previewed some other innovations to come:

Biometrics in credit cards and mobile

Mastercard is piloting biometric features inits credit cards. By embedding a sensor in your credit card, Mastercard can confirm your identity without the need for a pin or signature.

The actual payment process wouldn't change for merchants or consumers. Using existing chip technology, card holders insert chips with their thumb on the biometric sensor. The biometric capture and confirmation happens within the card, and the transaction is approved without sharing any of this information with merchants.

Mastercard is also experimenting with biometric authentication using a phone camera and the palm of your hand. This would be more universal than a thumb print technology, which requires a smartphone with a finger scanning feature.

Is that shrimp locally sourced?

Mastercard is testing out blockchain technology to give businesses and consumers transparency into product supply chains.

In the grocery store, for example, a shopper can scan the QR code attached to a product's packaging to find out where it was sourced and how fresh it is. At their showcase, Mastercard's proof of concept was a bowl of cocktail shrimp.

By scanning the QR code attached to a toothpick, we discovered that the shrimp was caught in St. Joseph's Bay, Florida, on Tuesday, immediately frozen, then shipped to New York, where it was served on Thursday.