Commerce Weekly: Another mobile wallet is on the way

Isis Mobile Wallet is coming this summer, Canada gets its first mobile wallet, and NFC benefits may trump privacy concerns.

Here are a few stories from the commerce space that caught my attention this week.

Isis prepares its mobile wallet rollout

Isis-Mobile-Wallet.pngIsis Mobile Wallet had some big news this week. First, American Express officially got on board with the mobile payment platform. Damon Poeter at PCMag notes the announcement was something of a formality, as American Express joined the Isis Mobile Commerce Platform last year along with Visa, MasterCard, and Discover, but he writes: “… the credit card company did offer up specifics on which member accounts will be eligible for the Isis Mobile Wallet — namely, the U.S. Consumer, OPEN Small Business, and Serve cards.”

On the heels of that announcement, Isis announced its initial rollout in Austin and Salt Lake City will begin this summer. According to the press release, the first of its local merchant partners includes “hundreds of merchant locations in both Austin and Salt Lake City,” from bookstores to bakeries to pizza and burger joints. In addition to local partners, several national partners also were announced, including Aeropostale, The Coca-Cola Company, Champs, Dillard’s, Foot Locker, Jamba Juice and Macy’s. A list of partners can be found in the press release.

This is a step forward in the U.S. for mobile commerce, but in a post at Wired, Nathan Olivarez-Giles writes: “As for which smartphones will actually work with Isis, the mobile payments consortium is keeping mum.” He also says not to “feel too bad for Google Wallet,” Isis’ main rival, as many of Isis’ national partners have already signed on with Google Wallet.

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Canada gets a mobile wallet

Canadian banks recently agreed on a new set of guidelines that support secure transactions using NFC chips. In a post at The Globe and Mail, Grant Robertson and Rita Trichur report that the new guidelines will “change the way Canadians pay for goods at retailers across the country” and will “open the door for partnerships between financial institutions and telecommunications companies to embed credit card and debit card information inside smartphones.”

That door didn’t need to be open long — almost immediately, Rogers Communications and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) announced a partnership to launch Canada’s first mobile wallet. Alastair Sharp and Cameron French at Reuters report that the wallet will be available later this year. The mobile commerce technology situation in Canada is a step ahead of most Western countries, including the U.S. — as Sharp and French point out, Canadian retailers have broadly adopted the electronic reader equipment required to interact with NFC chips.

Rob Bruce, president of communications for Rogers, told Reuters “60 percent of Rogers’ postpaid customers use a smartphone and that some 300,000 of those are already NFC-enabled.” Bruce speculated that mobile wallets will be as common as cameras on smartphones within a few years. Robertson and Trichur at the Globe and Mail also note that “[s]ince most consumers upgrade their cellphones every 18 to 20 months, it is estimated that the majority of Canadians will have NFC-enabled smartphones by 2014.”

Benefits of sharing may trump NFC privacy concerns

According to research conducted by Catapult, technology isn’t the only holdup for U.S. mobile wallet adoption. EMarketer reports that “[91% of respondents to the Catapult survey] said they would worry about maintaining their privacy, including two-thirds who would be ‘very concerned’ about this.”

Consumer privacy concerns may have a lot to do with the newness of the technology, however, and once consumers use it, they might find it more useful and convenient than worrisome. Kit Eaton at Fast Company argues that sharing your identity and a touch of personal information via NFC will lead to discovery and finding things you never knew you wanted. He says such sharing allows businesses to better understand and serve consumers:

“Picture a music festival in five years’ time when instead of a wristband you’ll wave your smartphone at a wireless portal, and an app you’ve pre-set to share particular pieces of personal info (perhaps age, gender, and so on) communicates with the festival’s computer. In return it sends a promotional tweet and you’ll get a free ringtone to promote the upcoming single of the band you’re listening to or an invite to a streaming music service where the band has created a playlist of artists you might like.”

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