ADN’co Payments Insight – July 2014

Still more HCE launches

• AUSTRALIA – The Australian bank CUA partnered with Cuscal on launching redi2PAY: an HCE-based mobile contactless payment service.

• SPAIN – BBVA and Visa unveiled an HCE-based mobile contactless payment service. This rollout is also intended to cover other markets.

HCE-related headlines are now legion and several additional announcements are expected. This technology keeps attracting banking institutions and might be an opportunity for them to uphold further high value-added services.

In Spain, BBVA follows in Banco Sabadell’s footsteps and even outruns Bankinter with this launch. These initiatives do not however hinder mobile carriers’ ambitions as their SIM-centric plans are still in process (BASE Wallet in Germany, for example) however some wallets have been shut down recently (Buyster, in France).

Visa reshapes its digital wallet

• INTERNATIONAL – Visa Checkout has just been launched in the US, Canada and Australia, instead of V.me by Visa, the latter is now aimed at further European coverage.

More than just a name change, Visa Checkout is a means of this card scheme to counter the development of its main rival, MasterPass. Both Visa and MasterCard are speeding up the pace of their international rollouts, highlighting multimedia ambitions.

Amazon rushing into payments?

• UNITED STATES – Amazon unveils Amazon Wallet: initially crafted for loyalty offers, this service seems to hint at later payments-oriented moves… all the more so that rumours regarding an Amazon mPOS service have been prevailing, too: new business for Amazon as it might try to take on eBay’s lead.

Digital wallets: French banks keeping up the work

• FRANCE – Crédit Mutuel Arkéa joins in the Paylib initiative alongside BNP Paribas, Société Générale and La Banque Postale. Good news for this identifiers-based payment solution now aiming for no less than 24 million customers…
• FRANCE – BPCE rolls out S-money in French universities in partnership with the CROUS: This wallet will be added to the Izly set of services instead of Moneo’s e-purse.

A room for social networks in the mobile commerce industry

• UNITED STATES – Facebook tests a Buy button: a way for brands and advertisers to monetise their campaigns.
• UNITED STATES – Twitter would be testing an in-tweet Buy now option with the help of some partner e-merchants.