EXCLUSIVE— The march of mobile banking and payments continues across the U.S., but it may be smarter for those startups looking to break into that market to look at other regions, Eric Wiesen, general partner for Bullpen Capital, told Bank Innovation.

“In the U.S., my guess is that mobile payments will continue to grow perfectly nicely,” Wiesen said. “I don’t know that there’s room for another consumer-facing payment slot in the U.S.”

Wiesen attributed the rise of mobile payments to the usual suspects (services like Apple Pay and Venmo, which have been steadily gaining ground for the past few years), and noted that “it’s tricky” to put forward another consumer payment application to stand against such services.

Even the bank-backed Zelle may not have much luck, according to Wiesen, who used to sit on the board for Venmo.

“It’s too early to say that’s Zelle is going to work. [The banks] have tried to do this three or four times before, it hasn’t really worked,” Wiesen told Bank Innovation.

Zelle seems to be having a fair amount of success at the moment, as a service integrated into other banks’ mobile apps — particularly Bank of America, which has boasted of growing Zelle transaction volumes since it first added the capability to its app — even as its standalone bank app remains more of a mystery.

Launched September 2017, 500,000 people have downloaded the app for Android, and the app ranks in the top 15 finance apps for Apple (no download numbers are shown for the iPhone app), but active user figures for the app remain unknown.

While mobile payments in the U.S. continues its current crawl of growth, other regions might provide better opportunity for new apps and services: regions such as India, Wiesen said, echoing several others in fintech who have expressed a keen interest in the developments of payments in India.

“You need to be really smart about what’s happening in India,” Wiesen said, as the country is seeing “crazy growth” when it comes to mobile — which could provide a key opportunity for someone to “get [payments] right” in the region, he said.

To learn more about the latest developments in mobile payments and services, join us on March 5-6, 2018 at the Parc 55 in San Francisco for Bank Innovation 2018. Click here to request an invitation.