It’s been 4 years since Apple introduced Passbook, which has been renamed Wallet. Since then we’ve also seen the emergence of other wallets such as Android Pay, Samsung Pay, WeChat Wallet, LG Pay, AliPay Wallet, and more.
For those completely new to mobile wallet, here’s a quick primer. A mobile wallet is all your wallet content – payment and non payment items (also known as passes) – that can be organized, stored, and accessed on your mobile device. It keeps your loyalty cards, coupons, stored value cards, membership cards, tickets, and more all in one place.
Our email course explains everything there is about mobile wallet, but we thought we’d highlight some of the key benefits of mobile wallet here.
For Consumers
Convenience and preference: Passes stored in the customers’ preferred wallet application provide ultimate convenience, minimal memory usage and aligns with smartphone owners’ preferences. Similar to how smartphone owners like to store and manage their email in their native mail application, they like to store and manage wallet content in their native wallet application – Apple Wallet, Android Pay, or WeChat Wallet.
As well as the dynamic nature of a pass, links can be placed on the back of the pass, which allows the customer to find your business (and your web assets) easily. For example, they can link to your app quickly, or your website, or link to the map application to find the nearest branch, or call your customer support center.
Effectively a pass presents a ‘smart bookmark’ for the smartphone owner to all of your assets. All without having to remember your web address or where they stored your app (if they have even installed your app).
For Businesses
Cost: It costs significantly less to issue wallet content with PassKit when compared to designing, developing, distributing and maintaining this functionality with your own app. You can then focus your precious IT resources on making your app (if you have one), or your mobile website, more useful & immersive for customers, and allow them to store wallet content in mobile wallet.
For businesses that do have an app, or are considering developing an app, wallet apps can work in collaboration with an app. Companion apps should not duplicate the functionality of the wallet app, rather they should enrich the user experience by doing things that wallet can’t do, such as letting the user select a reward and redeem points. When they do so, the pass is automatically updated. This can happen even if the customer chooses to transact or take some action (e.g. redeem points) online, even if they are not on their smartphone.
Time: No need to spend time understanding the complexities of different wallets and ecosystems. PassKit technology is available today as are wallet apps in most smartphones. For any smartphone that does not have a wallet app, PassKit provides a wallet app that can be downloaded, or a browser fall back if a customer still doesn’t want to install an app but wants to view their wallet content. Let us do the heavy lifting so that you can focus on your core business.
Revenue: Unlike paper and plastic, digital wallet content (passes) are personalized and dynamic. They represent a new engagement channel to your customer base. Once a customer has added a pass to their wallet application, you can easily encourage behavior (without emails or SMS messages) as well as subtly remind customers that they can use your loyalty card/coupon/ticket etc.
Lock screen messages and pass updates can be based on customer behavior (e.g. a customer hasn’t used their credit card for some time, or they’ve just redeemed points), time (e.g. when their card is nearing expiry), location (e.g. when they are in proximity to a your store or the places that are relevant) or other data like social preferences. By providing convenient links on the back of the pass, it also helps customers to engage with your other digital assets (e.g. your app, your website, your customer support channel, your social media, etc.)
Brand Image: By using digital passes, as opposed to plastic, paper or emails, your company is seen as progressive and innovative. There is also a corporate social responsibility (CSR) angle you can promote, as you are reducing the consumption of wasteful paper and plastic.
What Next?
If you want to learn more about mobile wallet, sign up for our free 9 day email course.
Looking to get into mobile wallet today? Check out some of our cool solutions.
