Mobile wallets

Mobile wallets have always been a hard sell. In many countries, credit and debit cards work well enough that consumers don't want to learn a new way to pay. But banks and technology companies are committed to bringing their wallet apps to market. In an effort to stay competitive, these companies have spent considerable effort to get their wallets to stand out not only against competitors, but against the compelling option to keep using cash and cards.

Consumers’ behavior around paying bills is often fluid and millennials put a high priority on paying bills immediately, which sometimes means with cash.

Here we take a data-driven journey into 2018 and some of the key trends that we’re likely to witness.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. will soon kick off a cash-back incentive for credit card customers who pay with a mobile wallet, and it doesn’t matter if the transaction is handled by its proprietary Chase Pay platform or Apple Pay, Android Pay or Samsung Pay.

More retailers are accepting mobile wallets, but few agree on what that entails. Many stores are coming up with their own wallets by building on past successes or burying payments deep under the surface of their mobile channel.

Due to new and advanced analytical and analysis practices such as shopping behavior analysis, customer data, including credit card info, now travels to different teams within the organization, multiplying the opportunities for data leakage and exposure, writes Yo Delmar, vice president of GRC Solutions at MetricStream.

As the reigning technology giants demand consumers do everything through voice-controlled smart speakers, they may inadvertently succeed where smartphone-based wallets stalled.

Chase Pay was years in the making, and it's still finding new ways to reach its intended audience. On the surface it seems like a simple QR code-based mobile wallet, but underneath it's far more complex.

PNC's new consumer lending platform will be marketed on a national scale.

While consumer adoption of mobile payments remains sluggish, research behind the scenes to figure out what consumers want from mobile apps is brisk. Proprietary mobile apps from retailers are becoming a hotspot of development, with Target Corp. rolling out Target Wallet this week, joining numerous other retailer mobile apps.