Visa launched their e-wallet, V.me, in late 2011, but this was discontinued in July, 2014 in favor of Visa’s new, although quite similar service, Visa Checkout. Since launch Visa has signed on notable merchants to accept Visa Checkout and will soon begin a major advertising push to drive consumer adoption.
Visa has discontinued their original e-wallet, V.me, but is still focused on maintaining high use of Visa branded cards in the CNP channel with their new Visa Checkout service. This is coming at a crucial time as increasingly more consumers continue to move from computers to mobile devices for making online purchases. Visa Checkout isn’t all that different from its predecessor, V.me. It’s a service that stores Visa and other payment cards along with other pertinent billing and shipping information, and consumers enjoy expedited checkout with supporting merchants by simply providing their username (which is either the consumer’s mobile number or email address) and password. This especially expedites completing purchases from a mobile device.
Card Not Present payments continue to grow by leaps and bounds worldwide, but what’s changing is how those payments are made. Online payments made from smartphones, tablets and other connected devices are cannibalizing traditional (desktop/laptop) eCommerce payments and growing at higher rates. Visa wants to keep their position as the largest and most used card brand in the world, which means keeping pace in the mobile environment and maintaining an easy, convenient payment process in whatever channel a cardholder wants to use. With Visa Checkout the company is focused on a consistent purchase experience across devices, and merchants can accept payments through Visa Checkout on their website, mobile optimized site or within their mobile app.
Visa CEO Charlie Scharf elaborated that “As people around the world spend more time and money online, particularly using mobile devices, they are demanding a fast, secure and frictionless way to shop using the payments cards they already know and trust.” Visa Checkout seeks to address this, but don’t call it a wallet. Sam Shrauger, Visa’s SVP of Digital Solutions, insists that Visa Checkout is not a wallet, rather a digital representation of your Visa card that maintains the Visa brand.
Since the service will store non-Visa branded cards and securely stores all payment information for easy online and mobile access, it seems silly to object to this being called a wallet. But there might be some more reasoning around this. More and more the term wallet, especially mobile wallet, is associated with contactless payments at the point of sale. When trying to describe Visa Checkout as a wallet that can be used on mobile devices, there can be confusion as to whether this is an online or in-person payment. Google Checkout took on the Google Wallet name following the release of the mobile contactless payment service. Google along with PayPal and others offer an online e-wallet in addition to the mobile application for making mobile payments at the point-of-sale. Visa may be trying to keep Checkout, the CNP online and mobile payment service, separate from future contactless payment, Customer Present, mobile wallet plans or potential partnerships.
Nonetheless, Visa is putting a great deal of effort behind building out and promoting Visa Checkout to achieve a large merchant and cardholder user base. Visa has already signed on several major eCommerce merchants who are accepting Visa Checkout for payment including Staples, Rakuten (Buy.com) and TicketMaster. Visa just announced in early August that NewEgg would be accepting Visa Checkout while Neiman Marcus added the payment method at the end of July. Visa has also stated that they will embark on a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to create awareness of Visa Checkout and get consumers using it. The advertising will be focused around the 2014 back-to-school and holiday retail time periods.
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