In late April, Walmart launched its latest salvo in the quest for mobile payment domination: version 6.8 of its mobile app, which now includes a payment mechanism Walmart Pay. According to Walmart, the app is now available in roughly 100 stores, with nationwide functionality by late summer. Walmart claims that the app has already garnered around 22 million users.
But the road to Walmart Pay has been a strange one.
About a year and a half ago, a consortium of giant retailers, called MCX and led by Walmart, began making headlines with its QR-code-based CurrentC mobile payments platform. These competitors decided to pool their resources and create a mobile point-of-sale payment system that would sidestep credit cards and credit card processing fees. Other members of the consortium include Target, Best Buy, Lowe's and CVS, among others.
While CurrentC was primarily designed to address retailers' concerns rather than provide customer convenience, MCX members believed that if they created a payment mechanism that could be used by multiple major retailers, consumers would eventually buy in to the idea.
Then, Walmart dropped a bombshell, announcing Walmart Pay in December. Like CurrentC, the system is based on QR codes. But unlike CurrentC, Walmart Pay can only be used for Walmart purchases — it's baked into the Walmart mobile app. While Walmart claims that it "remains committed" to MCX and CurrentC, many industry experts are doubtful.
While CurrentC's future with Walmart may be in question, Chase announced in late 2015 that it would team with MCX to launch its own CurrentC-based mobile wallet called Chase Pay. Already already available for online transactions, Chase Pay is scheduled to launch for in-store point-of-sale transactions sometime this summer. Chase boasts about 94 million card accounts, all of which work Chase Pay. That dwarfs the roughly 30 million potential Apple Pay users, but doesn't come close to the 1.4 billion Android devices that Google claims.
So what does all this mean for your credit union? Should you sit back and let the big-box retailers, technology giants and mega banks battle it out?
Probably not.
Regardless of which technologies are left standing when the dust settles, mobile payments are clearly here to stay. While your mobile payment strategy might start with Apple Pay, in other words, it should certainly not stop there.
Mobile transactions are quickly moving beyond simple retail purchases. Technology now brings mobile transaction speed and efficiency to the branch setting. Any credit union that hopes to thrive in the digital economy should rank mobile transaction technology high on the list of priority initiatives. Because as you can see, there is no time to "wait and see."
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