The 2016 Outlook For Digital Wallets

By Chris Allen, Director, Demand Generation & Channel Marketing, Vantiv Integrated Payments (formerly Mercury Payment Systems)

Mobile payment transactions will likely improve trifold this year.

Will 2016 be the year consumers ditch their card-carrying wallets for the digital variety? Will it usher in a trend of merchants adopting NFC (near field communication) technology to process mobile wallet payment transactions? It’s a payment solution several years in the making, but many indicators point to 2016 as the year mobile wallets finally turn that corner in the payments integration landscape.

As Apple Pay leads the charge for mobile payments acceptance and integration, a short history of mobile payments successes and setbacks have paved the way for the potential widespread adoption of this emerging payment option.

In September 2011, Google launched Google Wallet. Due to several factors working against it, including a lack of carrier and device partners, few supporting retailers, and low consumer trust, the app never quite took off. As Google Wallet transitioned to a person-to-person payment app, 2015 saw the addition of PayPal, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, Walmart Pay, Chase Pay, and Apple Pay (among many other players) to the mobile wallet evolution. Still, momentum has been slow to build. Despite the previous lackluster year, industry observers have high hopes for an enthusiastic 2016.

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