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Education

StreetSmarts SM

The most valuable tool in your arsenal

By Dee and Emily Karawadra to the possibility of having one. Elders, ranging from 55 to
Impact PaySystem 64 years old, are becoming increasingly savvy: just under
30 percent have an ewallet; 27 percent are interested in
he way we pay for merchandise and services is the idea.
changing. A few years ago no one had heard of
EMV chip cards, and now it is mandated that What this tells us is that the ewallet and payment apps
T merchants and card issuers have this technol- have staying power, and we in the merchant service
ogy. We are now seeing a shift in payment methods from industry need to offer merchants the ability to process
cash, check and credit cards to mobile wallets, contactless these types of transactions. Having the technology
payments and digital invoices. available so shoppers can wave or tap their smartphones
at the POS rather than pull out and dip their credit cards is
An electronic wallet (ewallet) – also called a mobile wallet going to allow payment professionals to tap into this $ 14
or digital wallet – is a type of electronic card that is used trillion market. More and more, late adaptors are coming
for transactions made online through a computer or a to find peace of mind in the secure storing of their card
smartphone. Its utility is the same as a credit or debit card. data and not carrying their credit cards with them.
An ewallet is linked with an individual's bank account How ISOs, MLSs get a piece of the $14 trillion pie
and/or credit card to make payments. This eliminates the
need to carry cash, checks or credit cards. Today, accepting digital wallets is as simple as a customer
tapping a phone at a merchant's POS device. This form
Convenience to the consumer is driving the need for of payment uses near field communication (NFC). NFC
new payment methods. This is why we see an increase technology is built into the majority of today's payment-
in usage on products like Apple Pay, Android Pay, acceptance terminals and other devices. NFC securely
Samsung Pay, Google Wallet and Amazon Pay. In 2014, transfers data between mobile device and POS using radio
Apple launched its first mobile wallet app. Samsung and frequencies. The near in NFC means that the consumer
Android introduced competing products the following needs to be in close proximity to the payment terminal.
year. In 2018, an eMarketer survey found that 22 million
U.S. consumers used Apple Pay's mobile payment As an ISO or merchant level salesperson (MLS) in the
solution. The transaction value of mobile payment apps is payments industry, providing this technology in your
projected to reach an estimated $14 trillion by 2022. payment terminals or dongles allows you to tap into
this growing ewallet market. The ability of the merchant
Mobile payments are used every day by millions of to accept these transaction types only increases the
people, but who is using what? Different demographics merchant's monthly volume, which in turn raises your
adopt technology at different paces. Studies show that the residual.
18- to 34-year-old age bracket has the highest adoption of
ewallets: almost 50 percent of smartphone users in this In addition, many ecommerce merchants are learning of the
group have an ewallet installed; 32 percent are interested benefits associated with offering digital wallet acceptance
in having one. The 35- to 44-year-old demographic shows as well. Digital wallets online rely on tokenization to
44 percent have an ewallet installed; 25 percent are drawn make checkout easy for consumers. Tokenization enables

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