Mobile wallets

The shift to electronic payments during the coronavirus has led to a notable increase in in-app debit card payments—particularly via Apple Pay—along with higher levels of direct debit and P2P debit card transfers.

On-demand delivery service Rappi is leveraging its huge customer base to provide financial products to Latin American consumers through partnerships and joint ventures with fintechs and banks.

Ant Group is planning one of Asia’s largest IPOs while the world’s afflicted by a global pandemic, political turmoil and historic economic stress. Despite the chaos — or perhaps because of it — the timing could be right for Ant to challenge the global order in e-commerce and digital payments.

The coronavirus pandemic has generated more interest in pay-at-the-pump apps, a growing segment of the payments industry that may not have grown fast enough to be ready for the sudden surge of interest in contactless payments.

Vodacom's Tanzania M-Pesa wallet is expanding its money transfer services throughout Africa, enabling more than 200 countries globally to now send money to and receive it from Tanzania.

More than a dozen large European banks plan to launch a payment system that would rival U.S. payment companies and technology firms, an idea that hasn’t worked in the past but may have a better chance given the current global health, economic and political crises.

To get an edge in the rapidly expanding earned wage access market, Branch is extending mobile contactless capabilities to its Mastercard debit account by adding Apple Pay and Google Pay to its app.

Latin America is seeing a surge in digital wallet adoption as governments seek ways to disburse coronavirus aid to vulnerable citizens, and consumers look for safe alternatives to cash.

SolarisBank and Visa have provided the technology to enable Vivid Money to launch its mobile banking app in Germany with virtual cards and cash-back rewards.

Paysafe is expanding the reach of its Skrill digital wallet to U.S. consumers who will be able to use it to send funds to 18 countries.

The modern mobile wallet no longer uses a card as a crutch. Instead, it sees it as an additional product that can add revenue from interchange, lending and loyalty.

People who order groceries for delivery may be using digital payments or a plastic card to pay for their food, but the person picking up the groceries may be making a separate payment at the point of pickup — and in the process, influencing the global shift toward contactless payments.

Many companies are postponing product rollouts until the economy improves, but the Samsung Money debit card could be better suited for spending habits during the coronavirus pandemic.

Criminals developing EventBot malware built it to take advantage of businesses and humans turning to mobile banking and payments in the current coronavirus crisis — but also to update itself on the fly to become more insidious in the future.

One of the selling points behind multi-account payment cards is the ability to shift spending on the fly or shortly after shopping, such as to fund a recent purchase with loyalty points. During the pandemic, this feature may become a key financial management tool.

While an EMV transit system is a form of account-based ticketing (ABT), this assimilation is problematic, says OSPT's Jean-Philippe Wolyniec.

The advent of open banking gives EMIs a once-in-a-generation opportunity to carry on doing what they do best, but doing it faster, cheaper, and with broader horizons, says Token.io's Stefano Paoletti.

Google’s reported plan to offer its own version of the Apple Card is less of a play for credit and more of a play for its mobile users' bank accounts.

Huawei Pay hopes to benefit from UnionPay's network and scale as it launches in Singapore, a market that already has several large mobile pay apps including Apple Pay.

Cash and digital payments don’t have to be mutually exclusive; this is not a zero-sum game as the two payment options can exist together, says PPRO's Steve Villegas.