The Mobile Wallet Report: PayPal takes its digital wallet overseas, biometrics gain ground and marketers flock to Apple Passbook

In the December edition of Mobile Wallet Outlook, the NFC World team examines the resurgence of interest in using fingerprint verification at the point of sale, the innovative new services being built on top of Apple’s Passbook mobile wallet and the latest consumer adoption surveys. Our first “spot report” takes an in-depth look at PayPal’s digital wallet and in-store payments strategy and asks whether the online payments giant can succeed in crossing the online-offline divide.

The December edition of Mobile Wallet Outlook, the monthly market trends bulletin for subscribers to The Mobile Wallet Report, has been published today and examines three key developments in the mobile wallet market over the last month:

  • Biometrics make a comeback at the point-of-sale. Fingerprint verification and other biometrics are now seeing a resurgence, led by newer approaches that enable consumers to have more control over the storage of their biometric template and expectations that Apple will employ fingerprint ID in a future iPhone. Can biometrics provide consumers with the level of trust in mobile wallets needed to gain widespread acceptance?
  • Marketers flock to Passbook as Apple’s ease of integration and location-based alerts prove irresistible. The ease of integration, low cost of entry, wide distribution, geolocation capabilities and ability to innovate on top of Apple’s Passbook APIs are enabling the proto mobile wallet app to gain unprecedented traction. We take a look at how marketers are building innovative services with Passbook and at the lessons other mobile wallet providers can learn from its success.
  • Lack of reasons to switch overtake consumers’ mobile payment security concerns. Surveys conducted in the US and the UK have found that, while worries over the security of mobile payments remain a concern, the perceived lack of any real benefit to using a mobile phone to make a payment is now the biggest barrier to adoption.

Mobile Wallet Market Briefing: PayPal

We have also published and sent to subscribers our first “spot report” this month.

“Mobile Wallet Market Briefing: PayPal” is a 42-page report that examines the online payments giant’s plans for expansion in the international in-store payments market in 2013 and analyses the strengths of PayPal’s technical armoury, its vision for a digital wallet in the cloud, its ability to scale at speed and the likelihood of it gaining widespread consumer and merchant acceptance — as well as the possible reasons why the company is so negative about the prospects for NFC.

Update “Mobile Wallet Market Briefing: PayPal” is also available as a standalone report.

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