Page 119 - Pay Magazine s2014

volume 7 • fall 2014
More Mobile WAlletS on the Move
PayPal App
With broad brand recognition and 148 million active users, PayPal has the early lead in digital wallets, with four times the adoption of its closest third-party competitor, Google Wallet, according to Yankee Group. In addition to its original P2P features, PayPal’s mobile wallet enables consumers to find local offers and pay with their phones online and at thousands of online and brick-and-mortar retailers. Users also may store and pay with gift cards from within the wallet, and PayPal’s recent plans to expand fingerprint authentication and develop a smart watch app hint at more enhancements ahead.
Google Wallet
Though Google Wallet has endured many management changes and retoolings, the combined power of Google’s massive search engine reach, email database and opportu- nity to expand relationships with existing Google advertis- ers makes it a major competitive threat to wallet rivals. Integrated with dozens of brick-and-mortar merchants
for POS payment and millions more through the Buy With Google button on e-commerce sites, Google Wallet pivoted this year to embrace Host Card Emulation (see page 109), added a feature to store and manage gift cards, and slashed the cost of debit P2P transfers to zero.
Amazon Wallet App
Viewed together with Amazon’s one-click online check- out feature, the e-commerce giant’s 240 million users’ payment card details on file and growing array of online
shopping tools, Amazon Wallet has observers wonder- ing when it will make the leap to enable POS payments.
A partnership with Blackhawk Network announced in July enables users to load physical and digital gift cards to Amazon Wallet, track balances and pay online or at the POS. The app comes pre-installed on the Amazon Fire phone, which the company is advertising heavily.
Softcard Mobile Wallet
Softcard, the newly rebranded NFC handset-based mobile wallet from AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile is on a roll, notch- ing more than 600,000 activations during the first half of this year. Users get offers from participating merchants. New this year are prepaid card perks, with American Express Serve cardholders getting $1 back on each pur- chase of $1 or more via the app (up to $50 each month through the end of 2014). Regional marketing and in-store promotion from the concept’s telecom backers are fueling steady growth.
MCX
The broad mobile payment app in development from
60 major retailers, including Walmart and Target Corp.,
is taking time to gel, but its components command respect from rivals. Gemalto is developing the software, FIS will provide the payment processing platform and Paydiant
will handle its mobile commerce infrastructure connect- ing smartphones and POS terminals via an application programming interface to add mobile wallet capabilities
to merchants’ own loyalty apps.
Softcard mobile wallet supports merchant discounts.
barely aware of the commotion, according to a Yankee Group survey. Two-thirds of consumers surveyed earlier this year said they’re interested in learning about adopting a mobile wallet, but just 16 percent of consumers said they’ve used their phone to make an in-store payment within the past three months. Of those, 73 percent said they used mobile payments five times or less
per month.
That’s likely to change soon, analysts believe. “Some really impressive retail loyalty offer- ings are starting to show up,”
Thad Peterson, a senior analyst with Aite Group, tells Paybefore. Inconvenient paper-based coupons and other clunky approaches to consumer dis- counts and deals are under- going radical improvement
with the introduction of slick mobile wallets and apps that integrate easily with the POS delivery of data-driven offers
to consumers in real time, accord- ing to Peterson. It may take a
few more years for consumer behavior to change, but a shift is beginning. “It’s a space with a lot of potential in the future,” Peterson adds.
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