In this post, I will touch upon digital wallets & checkouts as well as some market movements that make me believe that it will be strategically important for issuers to occupy consumers’ digital wallets.
Fast checkouts and payments are on the rise
Consumers love convenience. Instead of spending time to fill out addresses and credit card credentials, shoppers can finish the job with just a couple clicks. The same goes for in-store check-outs. It’s a far more convenient experience for consumers to hover the phone or a smart watch over a card reader than to drop whatever they are doing with their phone, reach for a wallet and pick out a card. Granted, even though they may not appeal to less tech-savvy shoppers, these fast checkouts, when absent, may be a deal breaker to the more technologically shrewd crowd. I mean, there has to be a reason why many stores accept the likes of Apple Pay or PayPal, despite losing a bit more revenue. Businesses know that by not enabling convenient payments and checkouts, they risk losing a whole lot more.
The more these payment applications are accepted at stores, the more they become useful to consumers and the more consumers they can acquire. The more consumers these wallets acquire, the more they can appeal to stores. The virtuous cycle keeps going. As they become popular, the mobile wallets become something like downtown Manhattan to card issuers. While it doesn’t guarantee success, being present in consumers’ phone and wallets suddenly becomes more critical. Furthermore, there are developments on the market that highlight the importance of this point, starting with Visa.
A new rule from Visa
Per JP Morgan:
In April 2022, Visa will introduce updates to existing domestic interchange programs with categories and rates for card not present Visa EMV token transactions. This includes both network tokenized transactions and digital wallets. With this update, a roughly 10 basis point reduction will apply for many card not present transactions that are Visa EMV tokenized in most segments.
In some cases, interchange rates for non-token transactions will go up, so while the net benefit may not reach 10 basis points, merchants that do not take advantage of the digital wallet incentive will undoubtedly be leaving money on the table. As ecommerce continues to grow, shifts like these to the overall cost of payments will have significant cost implications and influence a merchant’s product development roadmap.
The gist of this news is that Visa will allow merchants to keep more money from mobile wallet transactions but make them pay more whenever customers have to type in their information and card credentials. A few basis points may not sound much, but if your online sales is $1 million/year, the savings can be up to $10,000. Visa is the biggest network out there, accepted in virtually every store around the world. When the new rule comes into effect in 2022, its impact will be wide-ranging. I expect Mastercard to follow suit soon. The question for issuers now becomes: can they sit idly and let their rivals occupy the valuable real estate on our phones?
Apple Pay
Apple Pay is a proprietary mobile wallet by Apple that enables convenient payments by just a phone tap in stores or one click online. The feature is compatible on iPhone 6, all the models that came after and all Apple Watch. That should cover pretty much every iPhone user in the U.S, which makes up 60% of the mobile market domestically. Since its debut in 2014, Apple Pay has grown increasingly popular over the years. As of January 2021, Apple Pay is available in 90% of stores in the U.S and hundreds of websites, including those of major brands. According to the 2020 Debit Issuer report by Pulse, mobile wallet debit payments in the U.S in 2019 by Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Pay totaled $1.3 billion, of which $1.1 billion came from Apple Pay. As of this writing, major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, San Francisco & Washington D.C already allow passengers to ride transit with Apple Pay. This kind of integration will only boost its popularity more in the future.
Almost all issuers in the US enable integration of their cards into Apple Pay. American Express lets users who are instantly approved add their cards to Apple Pay immediately. In July 2021, it’s reported that Apple is working on a BNPL service for Apple Pay transactions. Historically, Apple offers a payment plan for its select products & services via Apple Card. Apple Pay Later will allow approved customers to make four interest-free payments due every two weeks or monthly payments at an undisclosed yet interest. Customers can connect their Apple Pay with any card that they want and it’s not required to own an Apple Card. This service will make this mobile wallet even more attractive to customers, though right now whether or when it goes to market remains to be seen.
PayPal
Many people know PayPal as the known P2P platform or that payment option that used to be on eBay. Over the years, PayPal has transformed itself into something much bigger. It now provides a lot of services for both consumers and merchants. No longer restricted to online purchases, consumers can now use PayPal online and in stores with services such as QR Code, mobile wallets, contactless, debit card, credit cards, PayPal Credit and PayPal in 4.
The brand and the scale of PayPal are not to be underestimated. In Q2 FY2021, PayPal processed $311 billion in transactions, almost twice as much as $170 billion in the same quarter two years ago. The company’s YoY growth in transaction volume topped 40% in the last two quarters despite operating at an incredible scale. If you take out eBay, the growth rate was never lower than 45% in 2021. Additionally, there were 403 million active accounts, including 76 million Venmo and 32 million merchant accounts. Venmo’s transaction volume doubled in the last 18 months from $29 billion in Q4 FY2019 to $58 billion in Q2 FY2021. The scale of PayPal is also reflected on how fast they roll out new features. PayPal in 4 was launched in August 2020. Since launch, the service generated $3.5 billion in transaction volume, of which $1.5 billion alone took place in the last three months. Meanwhile, the number of merchants that enabled payments by QR codes leaped from 500,000 in Q3 FY2020 to 1.3 million in the most recent quarter.
On the earning call, the CEO of PayPal highlighted its imminent push into the in-store space.
Clearly, on the branded side, we think we add a tremendous amount of value, things that John talked about, buyer and seller protection, Buy Now, Pay Later at no incremental cost, fraud protection, highest checkout conversion, etc. But we took down rates for basic full-stack processing. That also was reduced somewhat substantially from the 2.9%, plus $0.30 to 2.59%, plus $0.49. And that is going to enable us to aggressively compete for all of the payment processing of the merchants that do business with us.
And you’ve heard us say time and time again, David, that we were going to move into the in-store space. We’re going to move so aggressively in there. We rolled out Zettle in the U.S., is a really beautiful full package. It doesn’t just include card reader but inventory management, sales reads out and allows a merchant to seamlessly load inventory in both their online and in-store locations and then, across multiple channels as well.
And so we’re, obviously, gonna be very aggressive on moving into in-store, and it’s always been part of our strategy. And by the way, if a small merchant does all of their business with us, they can actually see their overall costs come down. And we wanna encourage them to do all of their business with us because we are a trusted platform. They do turn to us, and we price, we think, the right way.
Source: Fool.com
If PayPal successfully becomes one of the de facto checkout methods in stores, given it’s already a popular checkout option online, how would smart issuers ignore the need to get into consumers’ PayPal wallet?
Shop Pay
Shop Pay is the native checkout feature by Shopify. Shopify is an eCommerce platform from Canada. It provides businesses with the tools necessary to build a customized online presence. When merchants list their products on Amazon or Walmart, they just rent a space and have little flexibility for their own branding. Plus, these merchants have to pay numerous fees to the likes of Amazon and Walmart. With Shopify, they pay a monthly subscription and a usage-based fee for some paid services. But stores can keep their own branding and gain more control over their destiny.
Shop Pay works similarly to Apple Pay, PayPal or Visa SRC. Once a credential is stored, customers can use Shop Pay across all stores powered by Shopify. In February 2021, Shopify expanded their checkout feature for the first time to all Shopify-powered stores on Facebook and Instagram. The collaboration was successful that a few months later, they decided to roll out Shop Pay to all merchants on Facebook and Google. This move can bear significant ramifications. Facebook owns the most popular social networks in the world like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Their access to billions of consumers is what retailers want. Google has the dominant market share in search and as a result, a unique access to consumers globally. As these tech giants make a push into eCommerce, Shop Pay will benefit from this partnership and grow even more.
Between its launch in 2017 and the end of 2020, Shop Pay facilitated $20 billion in transactions. The cumulative figure increased to $24 billion as of Q1 FY2021 and $30 billion as of Q2 FY2021. As you can see, Shop Pay is growing increasingly fast. The growth of Shop Pay coincides with the growth of Shopify. In the last quarter, Shopify processed more volume than it did in the entire year of 2018. As this company continues to expand and by extension, so does Shop Pay, how long can issuers be absent from this checkout option?
In summary
Engaged customers will add their favorite card to their mobile wallets. The challenge is for issuers that don’t occupy the top-of-wallet position yet. Customers can still rotate cards and choose a certain one at the time of purchase. Hence, being in a customer’s wallet doesn’t mean a card will be used often. Card issuers still need to offer values and work hard to increase engagement. But as the saying goes, you have to be in it to win it.
Minh Quang Duong 