By Oankaar Matharu
Technical Sales Manager
September 2017

Ah, my simple digital wallet…now, where did I put my digital card?

Don’t you just hate it, stood at the checkout rummaging through your wallet to find your credit or debit card, maybe a loyalty card too, so you can pay, collect points and leave in record time? Wouldn’t it be great if you could have all your cards digitally stored on a single device? No more rummaging through your physical wallet. You could select a payment card and maybe a loyalty card too from your phone, wave it at the payment terminal and the purchase is authorised, simple. That solves our problem and surely, easy to develop.

But, maybe, we’re not quite there. Have we just shifted from rummaging through the physical wallet to rummaging through the digital wallet? For example, I have Apple Pay with my favourite card loaded. Before I hear any hate, I like Android too, I do not discriminate, and we’re all equal. My credit card is linked to my Nero app too. Great, I no longer need to carry around a physical Nero stamp card, or a few as I can never seem to find the last one I used, it’s always wedged in between some receipts. Finally, I’ve registered with Tesco’s PayQwiq app, soon to be renamed as Tesco Pay+, so that I can have my Tesco Club card and my preferred payment method linked.

All in all, I have three setups that I use regularly, not due to my desire for it to work this way, but rather because this is what’s available under current solution capabilities. Ideally, I’d have one setup that includes payment and loyalty, a sort of one ring to rule them all, if you’ll excuse the Lord of the Rings pun. I don’t really want to be rummaging through my phone to go from one app to the other. I want to buy a coffee and my food shopping with one app and collect any loyalty points that are available along the way. At the moment, the rummaging has simply shifted from my physical wallet to my phone, moving around and authenticating each app before use. You might think, but now you no longer need to carry a physical wallet, so you have cut down on things to remember before walking out the door. Well, no, not really. There are still retailers without the capability to offer contactless payments. Only last week, whilst at a major department store, I was asked “What are you doing?” by a sales associate whilst I waved my phone at the payment terminal, both looking at each other with confused looks in our eyes. I had just assumed contactless payment was available.

Could the physical wallet be replaced one day? Yes, I think it will, but we are not there yet, the journey has just started. Without a common solution, it may still mean that a customer rummages through their phone to find the app they wish to pay via in place of rummaging through their wallet. But, it still beats having your loyalty card being eaten by your receipts with one last stamp left to redeem your free coffee.

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