Keep the MasterCard and Visa digital wallets generic ...

“market research shows customer [wot, only one?] want their digital wallets to be supplied by their main banking provider”—MasterCard's Matthew Barr.

I simply don’t believe it; we all have been using MasterCard and Visa credit cards now for many years; the loyalty/security is in the MasterCard and Visa brands, not the individual card-issuing retail banks, and in most cases the bank branding is barely noticeable; it’s the MasterCard or a Visa brand that is accepted around the world, not the issuing bank!

This “branding” is marketing madness, and that is demonstrated in CommBank’s branding of MasterPass as “CommBank Checkout”, with a convoluted registration process that failed when I tried to register my MasterCard thereon. Twelve months after MasterCard launched “MasterPass” I have not seen “MasterPass” or “CommBank Checkout” on even one online site! Still, I have seen (and used) Visa’s generic “V.me” on only one online site; registration was as simple as it could possibly be. Both these digital wallet products should be left generic as are virtually the underlying cards, and the registration process kept simple, as it is with “V.me” …

In the final analysis, there are only two “professional” digital wallets, MasterCard’s “MasterPass” and Visa’s “V.me”; all the others are clunky middlemen operating via Credit Card Merchant Accounts with their own retail banker and, indeed, riding—precariously—on the backs of MasterCard and Visa …

eBay’s Johnny Ho is continuing to laugh all the way to his bank with his generic “PreyPal” when the retail banks should be working to drive this clunky operator back to its only appropriate place as the mandated offering on the eBay market place or otherwise as the Merchant Account provider of last resort for those that don’t have the confidence of their own banker …