Fighting for Position: The Mobile Wallet Wars

Payments and Silicon Valley Clash Over the Mobile Wallet

Boston, MA -- Despite words to the contrary, the mobile wallet will soon be a war zone, fought over by mobile operators, handset manufacturers, payment industry heavyweights, and Silicon Valley giants. Merchants will be challenged to choose sides and form alliances. Tactical pressures include the pace of NFC rollout, lessons learned from in-depth pilot testing, and how quickly merchants will adopt new contact and contactless EMV terminals.

Mercator Advisory Group's new report Fighting for Position: The Mobile Wallet Wars examines who is in on the fight and their approaches to market. The report also dives into to the evolution of the mobile wallet and the direction it needs to take for success with consumers, merchants, and providers.

Highlights of this report include:

Market dynamics that will create opportunity for entrants of all stripes as well as widespread confusion amongst consumers.

Factors that will influence the overall success of mobile wallets, and an exploration of two mobile wallet models.

The one element that will be critical to a mobile wallet's function and eventual success.

Methods retailers can use to leverage mobile apps and take advantage of consumer willingness for engagement.

"As the interface where consumers meet payments, the mobile wallet will have strong influence over how consumers pay and interact with merchants. That's why so many competitors are battling for position on smartphones," states George Peabody, director of Mercator Advisory Group's Emerging Technologies Advisory Service. "This will be a protracted contest with mobile operators controlling one key technology, payments incumbents leveraging consumer trust, Silicon Valley giants going after payments and incentives, and merchants searching for a safe path through the field."

One of seven exhibits in this report:

This report is 29 pages long, with 7 exhibits and 3 tables.

Companies mentioned in this report include: Visa, MasterCard, Google, Apple, Isis, Zenius, Jumio, ROAM Data, Apriva, NuWallet, Payfone, Incomm, SparkBase, PayPal, AMEX, IBM, NCR, Retalix, MICROS, Radiant, Starbucks, Discover, Square, MobilePayUSA, Chase, Narrate, MoBeam, and Amazon.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group have access to this report as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access and other membership benefits.

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About Mercator Advisory Group
Mercator Advisory Group is the leading, independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com.