The mobile wallet providers Google Inc. and Isis continue to position their products as more than just payments vehicles to replace plastic cards.
Coupons, discount offers and rewards are part of the consumer shopping experience those companies want to make easier with near-field communications, which lets users complete transactions with wireless hand-held devices such as smartphones and tablet computers.
An Isis executive described the company's wallet as providing an experience that is more interactive than online shopping.
"The wallet is essentially a way for a consumer to replace the mouse click [in online shopping] with the phone tap [in brick-and-mortar shopping] and interact with the world around them with their phones," Jim Stapleton, Isis chief sales officer, told conference attendees on Nov. 2 at the opening session of SourceMedia's annual ATM, Debit and Prepaid Forum.
Stapleton described Isis as "providing the hyperlink" for banks and merchants to create different applications in the wallet. "We're not the programmers," Stapleton said. "We're a platform, and others will develop the experiences."
Stapleton played a video that demonstrated several ways consumers could use Isis' wallet. It showed a woman using her phone to download a coupon from an NFC chip-equipped advertising display in a subway station and then using it again to pay her fare at the turnstile. The woman then buys an item at a retailer with the discount coupon she received earlier. After she leaves the store, the wallet alerts her of deals nearby.
"What makes this exciting to the consumer is paying and everything else," Stapleton said.
And consumers have said they will use a multipurpose wallet, at least according to Isis' internal research.
Some 85% of the survey respondents said they were highly likely to embrace the mobile wallet concept.
How banks handle the mobile wallet over time will help drive the product's success, Stapleton said. "This brings a new ability to communicate with the consumer," he added.
Isis, a joint venture between AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, has said it will use pilot programs in Austin, Texas, and in Salt Lake City next year to help determine the mobile wallet experiences consumers want from their phones.
Although Isis brought major telecommunication companies together to jump-start mobile payments, each company would compete with each other to provide the best wallet experience, Stapleton noted.
"How well they use these tools will be the core of the competition between the carriers," he said.
Isis continues to work with banks as it ramps up for what it views as a soft launch next year. It wants agreements in place with banks to include provisions needed to put card credentials in the wallet so consumers do not use competitors' products to complete the wallet experience, Stapleton said.
