V.me, Visa Mobile Wallet, to Launch in 2012

The mobile commerce ecosystem is confusing because so many of the participants occupy uncertain roles. Google, PayPal, Isis and Visa or MasterCard might be seen as partners and suppliers or, in some instances, as competitors. In a growing number of cases, major contestants are both partners and competitors. Nor are the roles likely to remain as they appear today.

Today, Visa is a transaction network, but going forward the company will provide real-time offers, alerts and other tools to consumers. http://www.myvisaoffers.com/ And though Visa works with Google, PayPal and Isis, for example, that doesn't mean Visa might not emerge as a mobile wallet provider in its own right. Indeed, it appears that is precisely what Visa has in mind.

Visa earlier in 2011 announced a digital wallet solution which is designed to provide "a secure cross-channel digital wallet and a range of customized mobile payments services that address the specific requirements of geographic markets around the world."

In early December 2011,  Visa announced it had secured the www.v.me universal resource locator for "V.me by Visa," Visa's digital wallet and global acceptance mark. V.me by Visa will be a simple and secure way to pay online as well as in person, with PC, tablet, and mobile devices using Visa and non-Visa accounts, Visa says.

The digital wallet will store Visa and non-Visa payments accounts, support NFC payments and deliver a wide range of transaction services including e-commerce, mobile commerce, micropayments, social networks and person-to-person payments. Visa wallet

The service is built on the VisaNet processing network, existing credit, debit, prepaid and commercial product platforms as well as new capabilities Visa has acquired through its CyberSource, Authorize.net and PlaySpan subsidiaries.

The digital wallet initially was scheduled to go live in the United States and Canada late in 2011, though it appears the launch now will occur in 2012. V.me launch in 2012


 and Visa has already signed up fourteen financial services players for the launch, including:

• Barclaycard US
• BB&T Corporation
• Card Services for Credit Unions (CSCU)
• ICBA Bancard
• First Financial Bank of Ohio
• Nordstrom fsb
• Pentagon Federal Credit Union
• PNC Bank
• PSCU Financial Services
• Regions Bank
• Royal Bank of Canada
• Scotiabank
• TD Bank Group (US and Canada)
• US Bank

Separately, Visa and Gap have teamed up for real-time coupons under a program dubbed "Gap Mobile For You." With its network, Visa can see relevance—it knows where you are and what you bought—as well as fulfillment of an offer. Mobile wallet wars 

Mobile Wallet: Consumers Are Hesitant, For Good Reason

A new survey by Compete suggests most consumers are not yet inclined to use mobile wallet services, despite apparent awareness of around two thirds of respondents. 


About two thirds of people who use debit cards and credit cards say they aren’t planning to start anytime soon. Just seven percent of banking consumers indicated that they would be very or extremely likely to start using their phone or tablet to make a bill payment. 


About five percent of banking consumers said they would be likely to start using their mobile device to make a deposit. Most also say they aren’t likely to start using their mobile device to make a point-of-sale purchase.


None of that should be surprising. Consumers need a clear value proposition, and it still isn't clear that has been established. Mobile Wallet: Consumers Are Hesitant Few wallet services have been able to fully develop the features they believe will clearly add significant value for consumers, and few retailers are able to support those features, either. 


Beyond that, few consumers actually are able to use near field communications, for example, since their current devices are not equipped to do so. 

Although current use and intended adoption rates for mobile services are low, once consumers adopt mobile financial or money services and start using their phone as a mobile wallet, they use the services frequently, the survey also shows. Some 16 percent of consumers using "Mobile tap and pay" do so daily and another 36 percent use it weekly. A full 87 percent of consumers using mobile couponing do so at least once a month.


There is one important element to keep in mind for any brand-new service such as mobile wallets, namely that it usually is quite impossible for end users to understand or to quantify their possible use of a product they have not yet experienced. 


Apple, for example, has not had a history of conducting market research about any of its new products, on the theory that consumers cannot really describe their possible use of a product they never have seen.

Isis Thinks Google Wallet Competition is a Good Thing

Mobile wallet providers

Michael Abbott, the CEO of carrier-backed mobile payments joint venture Isis, has an interesting take on rival Google Wallet: "It's the best thing that could happen."


You might think that an odd thing for one competitor to say about another major competitor. But early in the development of a brand-new industry, it actually can help to have multiple substantial contestants promoting the new market.


That is helpful because it reduces the perceived risk, on the part of potential users and customers. Any company executive that has tried to explain "what we do" in a market with no other providers or competitors will immediately grasp the concept. 

Abbott argues that competition from multiple parties is a good thing, early on, as it generates greater consumer awareness and can convince many other essential providers in the ecosystem to participate. Google Wallet is good for mobile payments


One is reminded that Apple under Steve Jobs did not conduct market research to develop new products, as Jobs' philosophy always was that people could not provide meaningful feedback about products they never have seen. 


That's another aspect of new markets, for new products consumers do not have experience using. Since people may not even be aware of why they need a product, it can be hard to sell such products. Having more contestants in such a market contributes to the overall evangelization process that creates better understanding on the part of users of why they "need" a product. 

Google Offers Partners With 14 Deal Providers

Google has just announced a set of new partnerships with over a dozen niche daily deal providers, which will now be integrated into the Google Offers service, both on the Web and in the Google Shopper mobile applications for iOS and Android.

The new Google Offers partners include Dealfind, DoodleDeals, Gilt City, GolfNow, HomeRun, JuiceInTheCity, kgbdeals, Mamapedia, PlumDistrict, PopSugar Shop, ReachDeals, Active.com Schwaggle, TIPPR, and zozi.


Initially, these deals will be only available to those in the San Francisco Bay area, but this feature will soon arrive to other areas, says Google. Google Offers Partners With 14 Deal Providers 

Some are skeptical about the long-term staying power of "daily deals" services. Certainly not all of the current providers will survive. But if you believe mobile wallet services will succeed, it will be largely on the strength of deals, offers and other rewards consumers receive, as well as the loyalty, retention and customer acquisition retailers benefit from.

Mobile "Payment" is Shifting to "Wallet"

Bloomberg technology writer Rich Jaroslovsky has been testing the new Google Wallet, and at least for the moment thinks mobile payment and wallets are less about improvements in the payments process, and lots more about the marketing and promotion advantages.

"This is really the secret sauce in mobile payments, because while, yeah, it is kind of a little bit more convenient, that isn't really what's going to get people to use it," he says. "What's going to get people to use it is the possibility that they can save money." Mobile payment more marketing than "payment"


The mobile payments business is starting over, says David W. Schropfer, a partner at Luciano Group. Ironically, as both Isis and the Google Wallet systems now essentially disclaim any interest in revenue from the transaction process, seeking instead to build new businesses based on advertising and loyalty, the “wallet” part of the mobile commerce business now seems to have “substantially slowed mobile commerce development in the rest of the developed world.”
To a large, though not complete extent, “payments” now are taking a back seat to “wallets,” which probably means we are headed for a period where “mobile commerce” becomes the headline phrase, not necessarily “mobile payments.” Mobile payments starting over 

Mobile Payments Business is Starting Over, Says Schropfer

The mobile payments business is starting over, says David W. Schropfer, a partner at Luciano Group. Ironically, as both Isis and the Google Wallet systems now essentially disclaim any interest in revenue from the transaction process, seeking instead to build new businesses based on advertising and loyalty, the “wallet” part of the mobile commerce business now seems to have “substantially slowed mobile commerce development in the rest of the developed world.”

To a large, though not complete extent, “payments” now are taking a back seat to “wallets,” which probably means we are headed for a period where “mobile commerce” becomes the headline phrase, not necessarily “mobile payments.”

The new direction, at least for many significant players, seems to be a recognition that “significant revenue is available from the advertising, retention and rewards programs,” says Schropfer. That’s the upside.

The other recognition is that the payments ecosystem cannot easily afford to support many new “mouths to feed” in the revenue chain. Complicated ecosystem That being the case, the incumbent participants have every incentive to use their considerable resources to thwart entry by a new category of participants, says Schropfer.

Make no mistake, there still remains  a potential disruption here. But it is a disruption of the broader commerce process, not the “payments” process in a narrow sense.

One might also argue that the “commerce” angle, aiming to reinvent the shopping experience, almost automatically answers the question of “what’s in it for retailers” in a way that “payments” systems have not. Merchants care about loyalty, customer retention and promoting customer traffic. The “Wallet” approach addresses all three of those concerns, in addition to providing value for consumers.

Loyalty programs and systems generally refer to programs intended to bring a consumer into a specific merchant with incentives such as coupons, discounts, and other incentives, says Schropfer. The advantages for consumers and merchants therefore are pretty clear.

“Remarkably, there are over 2.1 billion loyalty and rewards programs currently
issued to customers in the United States,” Schropfer says. “With only 300 million total
population, this equates to almost seven accounts for every individual in the United States.”

Just as important, retailers are willing to spend money to acquire new customers. “In a study by international consultancy Deloitte, the company estimated that merchants  are willing to pay between seven percent and nine percent of a transaction amount to acquire a new sale,” Schropfer says. 

That’s important because it suggests where a wallet revenue model lies: getting paid by a merchant to deliver a customer.

“Starting over” is a bold statement. But it is hard to deny that, with some exceptions, much of the activity in what used to be the “mobile payments” business now has shifted in the direction of “mobile wallet,” with a revenue model based on loyalty, offers, advertising, marketing, promotion and other elements of the commerce system.

One might argue that there are some areas, such as enabling use of a smart phone as a credit card reader, or integration of PayPal as a retail payments method, various forms of social and virtual currency or overseas or person-to-person remittances continue to be important for some segments of the “payments” business. 

Still, for the moment, “wallet” seems to have emerged as the more-important aspect of change in the mobile commerce arena, eclipsing “payments” for the moment, even though “wallet” value is sometimes harder to describe. “Starting over” is an important phrase, whether one agrees or not.

Google Wallet Users Make First Purchases

Customers make their first purchases with Google Wallet in San Francisco and New York.

Marketing is Business Driver for Mobile Wallets

Possibly the most meaningful impact that Google Wallet will have is on the advertising and marketing communities. Google offers will be Google’s application for deals, coupons, and offers that will inform you of promotions based on your location.

In that sense, the business case for mobile wallet apps will be location based advertising, the ability to view and compare the deals of local vendors, and coupons that do not have to be cut out of magazines or newspapers.

Local-targeted advertising will sound like Living Social and Groupon, and that's essentially correct.

Google shows mobile "payment" is about marketing

Mobile Payments Will Take 10 Years to Reach 50% of U.S. Households

Optimists might think mobile payments will be a significant business in as little as two to four years. 

Some might argue from history that it will take a decade or so for mobile payments to be adopted by a significant number of users. By "significant" we might say half of households using mobile payments. KPMG survey


History suggests why that might be so. After 20 years, the percentage of U.S. households using automatic bill paying is still only about 50 percent. Likewise, after 20 years, use of debit cards by U.S. households is only about 50 percent. 


It took about a decade for use of automated teller machines to reach usage by about half of U.S. households. 


The takeaway is that payments innovation tends to be a rather deliberate process, with adoption processes that take between 10 years to 20 years to reach 50 percent of consumer households.

Why Mobile Payments Might Still Be A Few Years Away

Why the Mobile Wallet Might Get More Traction than Mobile Payments

The "mobile wallet" (essentially, stored credentials and accounts on a smart lphone) might find greater success than mobile payments (using the mobile to complete a retail transaction) in the near term, a new study of Millennials might suggest. 

Using a mobile device as a substitute for carrying a plastic loyalty card is the top requested mobile payment application for Millennials (over 25 percent  expressed interest). Only 10 percent of  Millennials surveyed expressed interest in using a mobile device as a credit or debit card.

Millenial interest in loyalty programs also suggests a wallet approach might have more value than mobile payments.



Millennials respond to loyalty offers, the study sponsored by Aimia and conducted by Harris Interactive  has found. The online study found that more than 75 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed participate in loyalty and reward programs.



And more than 75 per cent of Millennials say they are more likely to choose a brand that offers a loyalty or reward program over a brand that doesn't offer one. Some 78 percent of U.S. respondents also indicated they would be more likely to do business with a company after earning a reward as well.,



In unprompted responses, Millennials rate loyalty rewards as the top incentive they look for in exchange for sharing personal information with marketers.



Nearly half of Millennials are willing to promote products or brands through social media in exchange for rewards.



Millennials view the option to download coupons or reward certificates as most enticing reason to use a rewards program application on a smart phone.



Some 57 percent of U.S. Millennials use mobile devices to perform price comparisons before making a purchase in a store.



What Millennials value

Google Wallet Launches

Right now, Google Wallet only works with Citi-Mastercards and the Google Prepaid Card. Visa and Google announced a worldwide agreement to support the Visa payWave app, but it will still be up to the financial institutions and banks to add support.



Google Wallet

Google Launches Wallet on Sprint

Google has released the first version of the Google Wallet app to Sprint. That means the Google Wallet app will be pushed to all Sprint Nexus S 4G phones through an over-the-air update. The app will be shown as“Wallet.”

Google Wallet Launching September 19, 2011

Google Wallet, Google's mobile payment and daily deals service, will officially launch Sept. 19, 2011, TechCrunch says. Google Wallet lets you load your credit cards to its app and tap your NFC-enabled phone to a special reader to make purchases.

It also ties in Google Offers, Google's semi-new Groupon clone. That means whenever you buy a Google Offer from a local vendor, Google Wallet automatically factors in your discount when you make the purchase.

Google Wallet Launching September 19

Google Wallet to Launch Sept. 19, 201?

Will Google Wallet launch this month, perhaps even on Sept. 19, 2011?

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Google Wallet

PayPal Outlines Mobile Payment, Wallet Plans

  PayPal plans

PayPal to Introduce Mobile Payments, Wallet, Promotion Platform

PayPal is introducing a new platform for retailers that includes mobile payment, mobile wallet, advertising and offer functions.

This is a big deal for PayPal and for mobile payments and mobile wallet users and providers.

The PayPal Blog