Chase has officially entered the mobile payments fray already populated by Apple, Samsung and Android by unveiling Chase Pay, a digital wallet that consumers can use to pay for items with a mobile phone.
Gordon Smith, CEO of Consumer & Community Banking at JPMorgan Chase & Co, made the announcement at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas.
Chase partnered with the Merchant Consumer Exchange (MCX), a consortium of merchants that has been developing the CurrentC mobile payments platform with plans to roll out the payment platform to more than 100,000 locations in mid-2016. Merchants who are accepting also will progressively roll out Chase Pay.
Advertisement
Chase customers will be able to use Chase Pay wherever CurrentC is accepted — either directly, or through the CurrentC app. CurrentC is still restricted to a pilot test in Columbus, Ohio.
Chase Pay will initially work for consumers that already have Chase credit, debit and prepaid cards. The bank also is partnering with 17 technology vendors, enabling merchants that are not Chase Commerce Solutions clients to participate in Chase Pay.
“Chase Pay solves a number of pain points for consumers and merchants,” said Smith of JPMorgan Chase & Co. “It will improve the customer experience and drive down the cost of payments.”
In an interview with Reuters, Smith indicated that Chase would be willing to accept a lower fee for Chase Pay transactions than for other transactions, and hopes to make up the difference by getting more volume through its network: “As merchants give us more business, we will give them better pricing,” Smith said.
The service may have an advantage over its competitors through its use of QR codes, enabling it to work with both Android and Apple phones. Android Pay and Samsung Pay are only compatible with Android devices, while Apple Pay works only on iPhones.
