Mobile wallets

Credit card benefits aren't worth much to a consumer who has no idea what the card offers, or has forgotten about them over time and simply never uses them.

The institution launched the PayQwig digital wallet in 2015 and made the mobile app available earlier this year to link a mobile wallet to Tesco shoppers' Clubcard to earn points each time it was used.

Targeting customers and linking mobile marketing to in-store sales is a challenge for retailers, but mobile payments can make a difference, writes Marissa Tarleton, chief marketing officer for RetailMeNot.

In a market seemingly dominated by "Pays" from smartphone makers, a few companies are taking a much different approach to mobile payments. Here are some of the more extreme examples.

When retailers run tests in which coupon offers are delivered directly to the Apple Pay or Android Pay mobile wallet, rather than as a simple text notification, the redemption potential skyrockets 300%.

Mobile wallet adoption in the U.S. is slow, and the payments industry has only itself to blame.

By eliminating the friction of a cardless ATM, the utility value of the mobile wallet has just increased by an order of magnitude, writes Dan McKinney, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Finxact.

Ask any consumer what their most-used mobile wallet is, and you'll get one answer. Ask an issuer or a merchant, and the answer could be vastly different. Here's why.

Among consumers who currently use at least one mobile payment app regularly, 29% say they have used Apple Pay in the past month, but other wallets are close behind.

Looking at the rise in issuers that support mobile wallets, one might think the concept has finally gone mainstream. But the actual usage numbers remain dismal, with few indications of what — if anything — will steer the market toward mobile payments.

From gold plating to silicon guts, the plastic card is not what it used to be. Here are some of the most ambitious attempts to make credit and debit cards relevant in a high-tech world.

Shopping and paying for goods with a smartphone or tablet has been a staple of modern consumerism for years, but mobile wallet adoption is just at its early stages, writes Lisa Stanton, president of InAuth.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit and blogs create environments where like-minded users can connect, share opinions and cultivate a sense of camaraderie, creating an unprecedented number of distinct nano-segments, writes Steve Gilde, director of global payments for Paragon.

Starbucks has hit a mobile payments milestone, with 30% of all U.S. transactions now coming through mobile, and to smooth operations surrounding its popular Mobile Order & Pay service, the company is introducing digital-ordering specialists at its busiest stores.

Ant Financial’s Alipay has formed a partnership with a large Malaysian bank, enabling the bank to advance its own mobile payments services using Alipay’s platform.

Citigroup is expanding its payments partnership to allow its card members to use their ThankYou rewards points for purchases at PayPal checkout in the U.S.

Seasoned payments industry observers predicted it would take time for mobile wallets to catch on, but few thought adoption would reverse course so soon.

Cards, e-wallets and transfers are all necessary for merchants to attract younger consumers to recurring payments, writes Artem Tymoshenko, CEO of MaxPay.

Long wait times and improved marketing are a couple of reasons retailers should consider their own apps, writes André Stoorvoge, director of product marketing for payments at Rambus.

Apple's plans to display a bright blue bar on iPhone screens when an application is monitoring the user's location may feel like a threat to location-based marketing. More likely, it is an overdue wake-up call for banks to improve their communication about the benefits of location data.