LAS VEGAS–Pushing a new mobile-wallet scheme is tough when each week seems to bring news of more potentially daunting new contenders.
But for Apriva LLC, which recently introduced its own Apriva Wallet concept, the buzz from rivals has been good for business, contends Paul Coppinger, Apriva president.
The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based payments-software developer is working with an undisclosed national restaurant chain, which will be among the first to implement its mobile wallet, Coppinger told PaymentsSource in an interview here following a March 5 presentation at the Cartes in North America Expo & Conference.
“The various recent announcements about mobile wallets have raised interest in what we’re doing and helped us get off the ground with several merchants,” he says.
Apriva in January announced the debut of Apriva Wallet, a smartphone-based mobile-commerce initiative designed to harness the merchant-acquiring channel by enabling independent sales organizations and agents to sell it as an added-value service (
Apriva Wallet enables merchants to set up a smartphone-based wallet customers can use to track loyalty programs, discounts and deals with their handsets, and link to other merchants’ similar programs, Coppinger says.
Declining to name the restaurant that will use its scheme, Coppinger said the program is “not a test” and will be the first of several similar programs Apriva is working to craft for specific merchants. Each program harnessing Apriva Wallet will be “white-labeled” around the merchant’s specific brand and needs, he said.
Unlike some other high-profile mobile wallets that center on brands associated with banks, payment networks, handset makers and telecom networks, “our view of the ideal mobile wallet is one that is neutral, open and versatile and enables consumers to keep track of multiple rewards, payments and receipts, all organized in one place,” Coppinger said.
One of Apriva’s unusual features is its emphasis on working with merchant acquirers, a constituency that has been somewhat overlooked in the mobile-wallet land rush, he said.
“Acquirers, which have strong relationships with merchants, are in an ideal position to distribute the mobile wallet, helping merchants to customize it according to each one’s unique needs,” Coppinger said.
If anything has stood in Apriva Wallet’s way so far, “it’s the lack of a definition of what a wallet is, and what it can do, that has been a challenge for us,” he said.
Other mobile-wallet approaches are “very specific to particular handset manufacturers, or require very specific new hardware and changes at the point of sale in order to work,” Coppinger noted. “Apriva Wallet requires no changes in existing infrastructure in order for consumers and merchants to begin using it.”
But Apriva’s mobile wallet is also yet another entrant in what is turning into a “Wild, Wild West” of competitive offerings that are increasingly difficult to handicap, Jose Diaz, director of technical and strategic business development for Thales eSecurity Inc., tells PaymentsSource.
“There are many different schemes and trials out there that are each trying to put concepts together to leverage their existing strengths and special interests,” Diaz says.
An unknown number of proposed mobile-wallet schemes likely will take hold and gain broad adoption, but the majority of recent entrants will probably fall by the wayside, Diaz predicts.
But the pressure to join the fray will spawn many more mobile-wallet schemes this year, he says.
“In today’s environment, you’re not talking about being part of something, then you’re going to be left behind,” Diaz says. “Right now, a lot of it is getting out there and saying you are doing something because some of these are going to take off.”
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