Another payments company is backing off digital wallets. MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, speaking in a fireside chat today at the JPMorgan Chase Global Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference in Boston, talked mobile payments and said, “I don’t want to be in the wallet business.” Banga said that he didn’t think MasterCard’s digital payment platform MasterPass is a digital wallet in the conventional sense. That said, one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, since the service allows users to store payment cards and pay with them both online and at select point-of-sale locations in the physical world. MasterCard won’t follow competitors like Google in betting on wallet, but will instead focus on developing a broader and more comprehensive service. The wallet space is already crowded, Banga said, and the number of branded options on checkout pages is approaching absurdity: I just think being in the wallet business is not going to make anyone go to greatness because every merchant and every bank wants to launch their own wallet. How many wallets will be on the checkout button of a merchant’s final page? And if you try shopping on that little phone that he is holding there, how many wallets do you think […]
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