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.
Initially, MCX partners has agreed not to support any other mobile commerce platform while they waiting for CurrentC to be released. This agreement is set to expire within the coming week, however, which will allow retailers to embrace other platforms, such as those coming from Google, Apple, and Samsung. Being able to embrace other platforms will provide retailers with a way to effectively engage mobile consumers, but it may be bad news for CurrentC, which has already struggled to maintain the support of retailers.