JPMorgan to enter mobile wallet market

JPMorgan Chase announced on October 26 that it is set to enter the crowded mobile wallet market and into direct competition with the likes of Apple, Samsung and Google. Speaking at the Money 20/20 conference, the bank’s head of consumer and community banking, Gordon Smith, said of Chase Pay: “We have tried to build it around the principles of being simple, being rewarding and being secure both for cardholders and for merchants.”

Chase is something of a latecomer to the party

Chase is something of a latecomer to the party, in that the service won’t hit until mid-2016 – although the bank’s influence among American consumers, Smith says, should make up the ground. Smith stressed in his presentation that half of all American households are JPMorgan customers, and flaunted the impressive statistic that 34 million transactions are conducted on Chase branded credit and debit cards per day.

Chase has also struck a deal with the Merchant Customer Exchange – comprising Walmart, Best Buy, Kmart and others – to up the technology’s adoption, and the partnership means the service will be available in over 100,000 American stores. With no clear market leader having emerged so far, this association with big-ticket retailers is a key point of differentiation between it and its closest rivals.

The announcement comes at an important time for the emerging mobile payments market, as Apple Pay tries to convince consumers of the technology’s superiority over plastic. According to Phoenix Marketing International, a disappointing 14 percent of credit card holders have adopted Apple Pay, and growth has tailed off after an initial surge last year. Bryan Yeager of eMarketer, meanwhile, believes next year will be a landmark year for mobile payments.