ADN’co Payments Insight – April 2015

Monéo falls from lack of adoption

• FRANCE – undermined by insufficient adoption rates, Monéo’s payment service will be terminated on 10 June.

The market of digital wallets keeps becoming clearer as more players vanish away. In Monéo’s case, losing the universities to S-money (BPCE) meant the end.

HCE: reviving mobile contactless payment in France?

• FRANCE – Société Générale launches a mobile contactless payment service for its customers with an NFC-compatible Android smartphone: one more move for Visa’s HCE pilot test.

Connected devices and day-to-day use cases

• BELGIUM – Carrefour presents Connected Kitchen, a scanner enabling customers to order items online.

Just like Amazon with their connected readers unveiled last year, Carrefour aims for its customers’ homes, and highlights the retail sector’s interest in a cross-channel approach.

• UNITED STATES – American Express relies on Jawbone’s fitness tracker to design a new contactless payment service. As the other international card schemes do, AmEx reaches out for this new market through giving wearables a part in their cardholders’ purchasing process.
• FRANCE – Lydia launches a mobile app crafted for the Apple Watch. This move gives it a key part in the payment process as well as in authenticating final customers.

The market of wearable devices is growing structured as more apps come up. In this context, international card schemes, retailers and start-ups all share a similar goal: catering for the development of actual use cases. Likewise, the German developer Wirecard and the manufacturer Kairos just added an HCE-based contactless payment feature to several next-generation hybrid watches.