What is the Future of Mobile Wallet?

With Apple Pay launching in exactly one week, we know that the future of payments is upon us. But as Apple Pay and other mobile payment providers grow, what does it mean for the future of mobile wallet?
History of The Mobile Wallet
While the mobile wallet and mobile payments first started around 2005, I’m going to begin the history with the major players; Google and Apple. Google Wallet went live in 2011, making them the first major company to bring the mobile wallet to market. One year later, in 2012, Apple announced the debut of Apple’s Passbook. This app was targeted more towards boarding passes, event tickets, and coupons rather than actual mobile payments. It wouldn’t be until two years later at the launch event of the iPhone 6, that Apple Pay would be announced.
Over time, more stores have started accepting mobile payments through NFC terminals, this has lead to more companies releasing or updating their versions of the mobile wallet. This includes the latest release of Android Pay, and Apple Passbook becoming Apple Wallet.

Apple’s Passbook becomes Apple Wallet
At this year’s WWDC, Apple announced that it would be integrating Passbook and Apple Pay into their new app, Apple Wallet. This has big potential for consumers. With your rewards cards integrated with Apple Pay, Wallet automatically brings up your rewards card for you. Which means you will never miss out on rewards again.

Apple also made a big announcement. They would be expanding Apple Pay into the UK. Bringing Apple pay outside of the U.S. shows that Apple has no intentions of slowing down. I think we can expect to see Apple Pay continue to move around the world as more companies jump on board.
What does the future of Apple Wallet look like?
We have now seen the full integration of the wallet by bringing it all to one app and letting it work together. The next step is more retailers. But even beyond that I think Apple will begin to integrate Apple Pay into much more such as public transport like they did with Apple Pay UK.
Upon submission for a new patent, we now know that Apple Pay will likely feature a P2P payment system. The patent is titled “Person-to-Person Payments Using Electronic Devices,” and features multiple ways to transfer money between people such as wi-fi, bluetooth, and NFC. This is much different than other P2P money transferring services such as Google Wallet, Venom, Square Cash,  and Facebook Payments that use e-mail and messages to share money. While the patent was filed in 2014, we may see this feature sooner rather than later.
Google Wallet Stays Alive- Brings in Android Pay for Help
Google Wallet may have been around the longest, but that does not mean it’s the most advanced. In fact, they are simply playing catch up. At the last Google I/O, they announced Android Pay. This is simply Android’s version of Apple Pay(the creative name is proof). It works very similar to Apple Pay in the fact that it is tap to pay and it integrates with Google Wallet. We did a full Android Pay breakdown that you can check out here.
What does the future of Google Wallet look like?
Google Wallet has decided to start marketing itself as a convenient place to transfer money between two people(sounds like Paypal), as well as somewhere you can store digital loyalty cards and coupons. Android Pay is the part of Google Wallet that allows for tap to pay transactions. The future of the Android side of things revolves more around the available devices capable of making Android Pay transactions. Don’t expect to see much real activity from Android Pay until 2016.
What does the future of Mobile Wallet look like?
The mobile wallet is going to start shaking things up. As more money enters the market, the more innovations we are likely to see. I think it won’t be too long until we see more integration with public transportation as well as the mobile wallet being accepted in more unusual places (i.e Square making it available to any business). Regardless, the way we transact is changing. The Apple Watch put the mobile wallet on your wrist. Is it too far of a stretch to say that one day, our wallet will simply be apart of us? Where we simply scan our hand to make a transaction. It may never go that far, but I promise you that the future of mobile wallet will be much further from where it stands today.