PayPal Innovation Opportunity – “All In” on the Consumer

I’m usually just a cynic. Today, I’m constructive with specific suggestions for PayPal’s new executive team. Note that about 80% of your large institutional investors will read this.. 

Exec Summary

  • Wallets are a core battlefield for Issuers, BigTech, marketplaces, and governments.
  • PayPal’s previous “super app” strategy failed because there was no clear consumer value proposition.
  • The most significant consumer value proposition to be unlocked is the unbundling of financial services, with the wallet providing the common UI to manage the complexity. In this future state, a “super wallet” would enable bank competition for every account and every transaction.
  • PayPal is well positioned to execute on a super wallet, but it must go ALL IN on a consumer-focused value proposition without regard for issuer relationships. 
  • For example, Curve is the best-in-class Wallet providing aggregation, transaction, loyalty and analytics across all account types, networks, POS, eCom, P2P and banking services. 

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Visa Launches Visa+ with PayPal as Anchor

Short Blog

https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-releases.releaseId.19621.html

Today Visa announced a major expansion of Visa Direct called Visa +, with PayPal as the anchor launch partner. “help individuals move money quickly and securely between different person-to-person (P2P) digital payment apps” without requiring the recipient to have a Visa card.

Visa+ expands Visa’s role as the meta-directory of payments connecting consumers, wallets and accounts with a master “payname”. If I were to write the marketing one-liner for Visa+ it would be “pay people in the way they want to be paid”

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SRC – Why Now and What is the Opportunity?

Short blog. What opportunity are top US issuers chasing with an SRC wallet?

During my talks with top acquirers, I gained new insight into eCommerce volumes. As a committed ApplePay user I was shocked to hear that ApplePay use in browser is significantly under 5% (even in iOS/Mac devices). Per my blog on intersections, the dynamic is due to both Chrome vs Safari and merchant adoption.

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Banks Launch “Wallet” (again)

Short Blog

Per the WSJ Article this AM, US banks have launched a new wallet (again). For frequent readers of my blog, very little new news. Also, I’m just wrapping up a 15-page part 4 “Innovation in Networks” that will be out very soon. 

Quick Summary

  • TCH Banks have been contemplating a mobile wallet and a new network for 13 yrs (I have over 20 blogs on topic, see overview here). 
  • Today we gain clarity that Banks gave up on their latest Authentify Wallet launch and jumped on board a “white label” SRC wallet led by Visa (See 23Jan2023 WSJ). I outlined this in my SRC blog (Sept 2022) and TCH RTP Update.  
  • Inital pitch for this wallet was not well received by big retailers at Money 2020. It entailed a liability shift if wallet was offered and all COF were tokenized (see blog)
  • The wallet is not owned by EWS, but a new payment network led by James Anderson. The ownership of this new network is the same at EWS (see blog ). Lets call this wallet EWS SRC to shorten the name. 
  • Competitor is Apple.. the banks want to own the mobile payment experience. Google is working with the TCH banks and is also working with FedNow (long blog coming on this one). It is likely that Apple is not involved in any of these activities, yet Google is working to pilot both FedNow and TCH RTP to leverage their India UPI success.
  • Now that the largest TCH banks have jumped on board SRC, the TCH RTP effort focus has shifted to commercial flows and bill payment.
  • i provided a detailed strategic discussion on the reasoning behind this move in Part 2 – The Power of Bank Networks.

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TCH Phase 1 – eCom Wallet

Short blog – 80% confidence

© Starpoint LLP, 2022. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner.

Phase 1 of TCH’s token efforts will be in SRC model. A bank branded “wallet” acting in the DCF role for TCH PIs . Just as VAC has enabled the elimination of physical hardware for acceptance, issuers see a plastic-less future for cards. They want to own the issuance of cards and want much more than a token, they want the entire “wallet”.

Go to market is either as:

  1. TCH as SRC System, or
  2. Visa as the SRC System for all TCH banks (V and MA) with TCH is a “unique role” managing all consumer data, registration, payment tokenization, …
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Google/FedNow + Banks Hire New Network CEO

© Starpoint LLP, 2022. No part of this site, blog.starpointllp.com, may be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of the copyright owner.

September 7

This blog is dated so I removed most of the content. Key Updates – 21 Jan 2023

  1. Banks gave up on their own AUthentify Wallet launch and jumped on board a “white label” SRC wallet led by Visa (See 23Jan2023 WSJ)
  2. Banks have been working on mobile payments for 13 years through TCH (see blog).
  3. Inital pitch was at Money 2020, big retailers didn’t bite (see blog)
  4. The wallet is not owned by EWS, but a new payment network led by James Anderson. The ownership of this new network is the same at EWS (see blog below).
  5. Competitor is Apple.. the banks want to own the mobile payment experience. Google is working with the TCH banks and is also working with FedNow (long blog coming on this one)
  6. TCH RTP effort focus has move to commercial flows and bill payment.. Forbes Article on Launch of Pay by Bank using TCH. Google’s role seems to be limited to hosting servers in the Google Cloud. This was NOT the big announcement I thought was coming. It looks like the TCH tokens in Google Wallet are actually “network tokens” with token vault as TCH
  7. Apple is not involved in any of these activities, yet Google is working to pilot both FedNow and TCH RTP to leverage their India UPI success.
  8. The banks have just hired James Anderson as CEO of a new banking consortium where the assets of TCH, Akoya and Early Warning line up. This CEO will be tasked with creating a new network to “compete with ApplePay” as the premier mobile payment platform.

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Google Wallet Re-Launch

Last week we saw a major relaunch of Google Wallet at Google I/O. See

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