Visa Europe has announced the expansion of its V.Me mobile wallet service through the forming of new partnerships with a number of the largest banks in the UK as well as leading retailers like Topshop, Iceland and Costco. V.Me which has been available in the UK since 2013 allows consumers to make online purchases without needing to share sensitive personal and financial data with retailers.
Commenting on the new expansion, Wendy Martin, executive director of V.me said that the V.Me is increasingly meaningful as consumer payment preferences shift.
“The experience of paying in store and online is far from ideal, as you constantly have to enter details. The key online shopping trends are that people are looking to spend on mobile and tablets and that more are doing it on the go.”
According to research by Barclays, consumers are set to spend £54 ($82) billion a year using phones and tablets by 2024 compared to £9.7 ($14.7) billion spent last year meaning that the mobile wallet solution that can rise to the top of a crowded field will be extremely lucrative to the operator.
The renewed push by Visa Europe and its V.Me highlights that the network continues to try and reinvent itself in order to remain in a leading industry positon. With interchange caps expected to hurt the network badly, solutions like V.Me being used to compensate. However with only 60,000 consumers able to use the service come June in a country where 97% of the adults have an account, V.Me has a long way to go to compete with other solutions like PayPal.
Overview by Tristan Hugo-Webb, Associate Director, Global Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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