Dive Brief:
- JPMorgan Chase announced it is developing a mobile wallet, Chase Pay, that will vie with Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay for supremacy in touchless digital payments.
- Chase plans to partner with the Merchants Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium, which includes retailers such as Wal-Mart, Lowes, Best Buy, and Target, to get its system into stores.
- MCX is also the developer of the CurrentC payments system, which has been in testing for three years and employs QR codes to facilitate mobile payments.
Dive Insight:
JPMorgan Chase is developing a new mobile wallet system for release in mid-2016 in partnership with MCX, a consortium of retailers and restaurants led by Wal-Mart, and its near-forgotten CurrentC app. Chase announced Chase Pay at the Money2020 conference this week and displayed a demonstration video of it facilitating consumer payment using QR codes, similar to CurrentC.
Interestingly, Chase Pay won’t enable near-field communication (NFC) chips to pay, instead using QR codes and smartphone cameras. QR codes are more cumbersome than NFC payments, but they work across mobile platforms, unlike Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay, which are limited to their hardware’s OS. The system will also be limited to Chase credit and debit cards, but the bank says it will charge lower fees than other providers.
While Chase Pay seems like an afterthought, MCX represents some of the largest retailers in the world, and Chase is the nation’s largest bank. Time will tell if that weight will translate to widespread adoption of the mobile wallet.
