CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE: DIGITAL WALLETS
Holding on to the past? The notion of what a ‘wallet’ is, has already altered beyond recognition. But the biggest change could yet lie ahead, according to G+D’s Jukka Yliuntinen Banks and financial institutions like to talk about ‘share of wallet’, by which they mean the amount of customer spend their brands command. Now, there’s a new twist on that phrase. Financial and technology companies are competing for a share of the growing digital wallet marketplace, which is opening up many opportunities for payment and personal identification – not to mention emerging cryptocurrency – services. One company with a strong interest in this space, which Graphical Research says will be worth $60billion in Europe by 2026, is Giesecke+Devrient (G+D). The specialist in security technologies operates across connectivity, identities and digital infrastructures as well as banknote and securities printing, smart cards, and cash handling systems. There’s not much it doesn’t know about ffnews.com
the evolution of payments, having watched them develop since 1852 – not quite as old as the physical wallet that emerged with the first banknotes in the West in the late 17th century, but an impressive heritage, nonetheless. As its head of digital solutions and part of the company’s mobile security initiative, Jukka Yliuntinen is at the heart of the company’s digital transformation strategies, looking after the digital solutions portfolio for financial institutions. “Although printing is still something we do, we’ve come a very long way since the 1850s; digitisation is now the driving force behind all our specialist areas,” he says. Digital cards and mobile communication are at the heart of wallet solutions that have been developing for more than a decade on the back of smartphones. But, Yliuntinen admits the semantics around ‘wallets’ are often confusing, the technology described in different ways for different objectives. And, as use cases increase, the definition has become even more open to interpretation. “Nowadays, most people think of wallet technology as an app that you run on your smartphone,” says Yliuntinen. “The first implementations were around 15 years ago, through mobile money
providers such as M-Pesa in Kenya and GCash in the Philippines. The arrival of near-field communication (NFC) was a big enabler and we saw the rapid emergence of the now-familiar ‘Pay’ brands – Apple, Google, Samsung, and so on.” It’s become a very crowded marketplace since, with many different types of wallet, operated by a sea of brands. And, as adoption has increased, people are using them for a variety of purposes, linked to, but with utility way beyond, payments. Samsung, for example, has just unveiled a digital wallet with crypto and digital documentation capabilities. Among other features, it can store student IDs, driving licences and national ID cards in digital formats. Apple, meanwhile, is improving usability with the announcement that it will enable millions of merchants across the US to use their iPhones to accept Apple Pay, contactless credit and debit cards, as well as other digital wallets. Tap To Pay will be available for payment platforms and app developers to integrate into their iOS apps and offer as a payment option to business customers. Stripe will be the first. “Positioning has become important over the last two years, in terms of who the wallet issuer is,” says Yliuntinen. Issue 11 | ThePaytechMagazine
41
