{"id":459569,"date":"2025-12-20T07:45:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T07:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/459569\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T07:45:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T07:45:20","slug":"visa-and-mastercard-push-mobile-wallet-strategies-paymentssource","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/459569\/","title":{"rendered":"Visa and Mastercard push mobile wallet strategies | PaymentsSource"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"rte2-style-ul\">\n<li><b>Key insights<\/b>: Visa and Mastercard are building mobile wallet scale through a series of partnerships.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><b>What&#8217;s at stake<\/b>: Both card networks say internal research is tracking popularity for mobile wallets.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><b>Forward look<\/b>: Apple&#8217;s agreement with EU regulators to open its NFC technology will draw more wallet providers in the next year.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As 2025 winds to a close, Mastercard has advanced two partnerships designed to enable merchant access to mobile wallets in dozens of countries, joining <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanbanker.com\/payments\/news\/apples-eu-concessions-open-a-door-for-visa\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">rival Visa<\/a> in building global distribution as consumers and merchants migrate more of their lives to smartphones. <\/p>\n<p>Processing Content<\/p>\n<p>Mastercard&#8217;s December moves include a collaboration with TerraPay, a London-based cross-border payments company, to enable TerraPay&#8217;s mobile wallet users to access more than 150 million Mastercard acceptance points for Near-Field Communication-based payments.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>NFC is a key enabling technology for smartphone payments. Under <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanbanker.com\/payments\/list\/eu-regulators-aim-at-apple-checkout-policy-jpmorgans-former-payments-boss-finds-a-new-job\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">regulatory pressure<\/a>, Apple has agreed to ease access to NFC, which the tech giant traditionally controlled. This is expected to open the market to dozens of mobile wallets, creating a need for Visa and Mastercard to broaden their ability to support a range of new ones. <\/p>\n<p>Mastercard&#8217;s TerraPay partnership comes as the card brand plans to boost mobile wallet usage in Latin America via a joint venture with Telefonica, a Madrid-based telecom. Telefonica and Mastercard plan to launch a mobile wallet in Brazil and surrounding countries that could have an addressable market of up to 87 million consumers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mastercard&#8217;s other recent collaborations include &#8220;Pay like a local,&#8221; a partnership between: Alipay and Mastercard to offer international travelers an option to make cashless payments in China; an integration with Alipay Wallet; and a contactless pay technology tie-up with Alipay.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Collaborations with key ecosystem players like Terrapay play a key role in scaling the positive impact via their multiple wallet partners and simplifying the implementation process,&#8221; said Prakriti Singh, executive vice president for core payments at Mastercard for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mobility<\/p>\n<p>Seventy percent of in-person Mastercard transactions are now contactless, the card network said, suggesting the popularity of mobile wallets is migrating from e-commerce to brick and mortar. Banks are also embracing mobile wallets. More than half of banks say at least 60% of their payment initiatives take a &#8220;mobile first&#8221; strategy, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanbanker.com\/research-report\/introducing-the-third-musketeer-of-payments-tech-generative-ai\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">research from American Banker<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Like Mastercard, Visa has made a series of partnerships to scale its mobile wallet strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Visa recently announced a digital wallet partnership with BBVA in Spain that combines Visa&#8217;s Token Service with the bank&#8217;s payment technology to enable BBVA&#8217;s mobile wallet. (A &#8220;token&#8221; in this case refers to digital payments security, not migrating services to a blockchain.)<\/p>\n<p>Other Visa mobile wallet projects in the EU include an iOS\/Android contactless mobile payment collaboration with Klarna; a Visa co-wallet with Vipps Mobile Pay in the Nordics; and a planned 2026 pilot with Bancomat, an Italian digital payments product.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This will enable consumer choice, which is a big underlying issue for us and our strategy,&#8221;\u00a0 Mathieu Altwegg, senior vice president and head of product and solutions for Europe at Visa, told American Banker.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Visa also cited its own research, reporting mobile payments make up 59% of all e-commerce transactions in Europe, with growth on pace to reach 75% in the next four years. Thirty-two percent of European consumers only use mobile wallets for payments, according to the card brand.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re seeing demand for these wallets, both to pay online and for face to face transactions,&#8221; he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Altwegg did not directly address Apple&#8217;s EU NFC settlement, but noted a proliferation of wallets.\u00a0&#8220;Being able to use different types of wallets will level the playing field,&#8221; he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Competitive response<\/p>\n<p>In Europe, the threat to the card networks is Europe&#8217;s bank-led wallets that use direct bank transfers instead of card networks, according to Ron van Wezel, a strategic advisor for Datos Insights.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Bank consortia provide digital wallets across Europe, launched through collaborative efforts between multiple banks,&#8221; Van Wezel told American Banker, noting that common successful bank-led wallets for specific domestic markets include MobilePay in Denmark, Swish in Sweden, Vipps in Norway and Bizum in Spain.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re direct bank account payment systems that compete with cards,&#8221; Van Wezel said. &#8220;When someone pays with these wallets, the money moves bank-to-bank via SEPA instant transfers, with no Visa, no Mastercard, and no interchange fees.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is why the Apple\/EU settlement matters so much, Van Wezel said, adding that these bank wallets couldn&#8217;t work on Apple devices at the point-of-sale prior to Apple&#8217;s EU settlement.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In this environment it&#8217;s critical that cards be available in digital wallets, Tony DeSanctis, a senior director at Cornerstone Advisors, told American Banker. &#8220;The question is which wallets are going to be relevant,&#8221; he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key insights: Visa and Mastercard are building mobile wallet scale through a series of partnerships.\u00a0 What&#8217;s at stake:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":459570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[209892,62162,611,36589,816,209891,817,158,67,132,68,23509,76918],"class_list":{"0":"post-459569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-arizent-research-stats","9":"tag-mastercard","10":"tag-mobile","11":"tag-mobile-wallets","12":"tag-payments","13":"tag-payments-innovation","14":"tag-pso-content","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-visa","20":"tag-yahoo-finance-feed"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115750785732926031","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}