BMO Harris Just Launched Three Wallets
Just when you thought the digital wallet craze was left behind in 2016, in comes BMO with three new wallets.
The bank launched BMO Harris Bank Masterpass – a Mastercard-branded wallet – as well as Android Pay and Samsung Pay yesterday for “select” credit and debit cards. The wallets are currently available for personal credit cards, personal debit cards, and small business debit cards only, with more card product integrations available later this year, the bank said. BMO Harris has supported Apple Pay since 2015.
Through Masterpass, BMO’s customers will be able to shop wherever contactless payments are accepted. “Our partnership with Mastercard allows us to differentiate our product suite in the marketplace, and we are thrilled to debut our new digital wallets and enrich the shopping experience for our customers,” Patrick Strieck, managing director of U.S. retail and small business payments, said in a statement. BMO is the third bank – together with Fifth Third and KeyBank – to integrate Masterpass.
Is BMO late in the digital wallet game? Probably not, since the public adoption of wallets is still lagging and consumers don’t fully see the value of installing another app to their crowded smartphones (yet).
A better question is: why launch Masterpass, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay, when having either one of those would (soon) allow BMO customers to shop pretty much everywhere. Mastercard announced in October that it will be partnering with Microsoft, Google, and Samsung in order to integrate its Masterpass network with those digital wallets starting in early 2017.
“Once the consumer opts in they’ll be able to pay wherever Masterpass is accepted,” said Kiki Del Valle, senior vice president for digital payments and labs at Mastercard, of the way the process will work. “It just so happens that the credentials that will be used will be Samsung’s.”
BMO Harris lists the four digital wallet so far available to consumers here.
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