JPMorgan Chase will acquire Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) payments tech – a network of the largest U.S. merchants, which ran a short-lived CurrentC pilot last year – the companies announced on Friday.

The acquisition will help expand Chase Pay, which was launched in Oct. 2015 – with MCX as the “premier” launch partner.

The deal may also put the bank’s digital wallet on track for accelerated customer adoption and additional features.

So far – just like for every other digital wallet out there – Chase Pay adoption has been slow, Adam Carson, the bank’s head of digital partnerships, said during a fireside chat at Bank Innovation 2017 last week:

“I am not going to be the one to predict, when every single person will pay with a phone every single time; but that’s going to be a while,” he said during the panel. “We have seen slow adoption so far, and part of it is [that] it doesn’t exactly work all the time everywhere.”

The bank is working on introducing new “features and experiences” for both the consumer and the merchant, Carson said, in order to differentiate Chase Pay in the saturated digital wallet market.

“When you move to digital wallets, there is an opportunity to offer a full commerce experience,” starting with digital receipts, coupons and special offers at the point of purchase, and, for example, personal finance management features post purchase, Carson explained.

The acquisition is in line with the bank’s overall fintech strategy: invest in companies,with a pre-existing commercial agreement.

“A lot of banks are leading with their investment arm, and then figuring out how they will use that technology,” Carson said. “At JPMorgan, we are much more about the partnership for commercial agreement and then we’ll look for strategic investment.” Fintech trends “inform” the bank’s strategy, rather than dictate it.

“I need to understand where we are going as a business, and then I go hunt for companies that will be in line with our strategy,” he added.