JP Morgan Chase sees major promise in the mobile commerce market
JP Morgan Chase is preparing to launch its first mobile payments service, called Chase Pay. The company expects that the service will be launched in the middle of 2016, competing with other companies that have already released their own payment services. JP Morgan Chase sees significant promise in the mobile payments space, as many consumers are beginning to use their smartphones to shop for products both online and in physical stores.
Chase Pay aims to make it easier for consumers to shop for and purchase products that they may be interested in
Chase Pay will allow consumers to pay for goods and services in physical stores as well as within mobile applications. Retailers are expected to support the mobile payments service, allowing customers to pay for products through their mobile websites. The service will be available to approximately 94 million Chase customers. Notably, Chase has partnered with Merchant Customer Exchange, which has also been working on its own mobile payments platform that is designed specifically for large retailers.
Large retailers are looking for ways to engage mobile shoppers
The Merchant Customer Exchange’s CurrentC platform is meant to provide large retailers with a way to effectively engage mobile consumers. The organization itself is comprised of large retailers, such as Walmart, Target, and Best Buy. These retailers have all agreed to use the CurrentC platform, but the service has yet to see a commercial release. As such, retailers are looking for ways to embrace mobile payments in order to better serve consumers that are interested in shopping with their smartphones and tablets.
Chase Pay may be able to compete with other services if it manages to provide better security
Chase Pay will face significant competition from services that have already established a foothold in the mobile commerce space. Whether or not the service will prove popular among consumers may depend on the security features it offers. Security has been a significant problem for the mobile commerce space for some time, with many consumers citing recent data breaches as the reason they will not use mobile payments services.
Mobile commerce began gaining momentum in China when Alibaba, the country’s leading online merchant, began supporting mobile shopping through its e-commerce store Taobao. Consumers quickly showed strong support for mobile shopping because of its convenient nature. The use of QR codes to initiate mobile transactions is quite popular throughout the country, as consumers can simply scan one of these codes with their smartphones in order to purchase products. Apps like WeChat have become very powerful tools in the retail space, pressuring merchants to become more mobile-centric.