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The regulatory shift in digital wallets, initiated in 2024, marks a transformative moment for banks and financial institutions. It presents a unique window of opportunity and opens key questions: should banks maintain the status quo, wait for alternative solutions to emerge, or actively position themselves in their customers’ everyday journeys by enhancing their mobile apps and offering innovative wallet solutions?

In this interview with Jukka Yliuntinen, the Head of Digital Issuance, we explore how NFC’s opening is reshaping the market and how empowering cardholders to download their cards through mobile apps can help banks and other wallet providers remain competitive and relevant, and consumers’ preferred choice.

$25 trillion—a figure hard to imagine, right? This is the expected number of payment transactions in mobile wallets by 2027. Staying ahead of the game is a considerable challenge. But empowering your customers to have what they want and need by paying anytime, anywhere, makes you achieve exactly that.

Let them pay with your trusted brand and enjoy an integrated user experience and increased security. Banks must consider how to leverage mobile contactless payment effectively. By doing so, they can not only enhance customer engagement but also differentiate themselves in a crowded market.

The market is exposed to constant updates, and considering the latest regulatory ones that enabled the opening of NFC connectivity across main mobile platforms, banks and financial institutions have a new window of opportunity to redefine their role in customers’ digital lives.

Knowing that a significant number of satisfied users come from a profoundly integrated platform into their device ecosystem, banks should be creative and can also benefit from playing it right. By leveraging their existing customer base, they can integrate services such as loyalty programs, rewards, cashback, and digital identity solutions, which makes their offer personalized, secure, and feature-rich, creating added value. Focusing on services like these allows them to enhance the customer journey while maintaining relevance in a competitive market.

A hybrid approach—supporting existing mobile payment services like the ones from xPays while introducing their own solutions is another way that ensures customer choice, minimizes churn and creates compelling new value propositions.

Any digital wallet today, to stay competitive, must be minimum on par with the existing mobile payment options and related user experience and offer real value to its users. Features such as personalized offers, loyalty rewards, and pay with points, alongside an excellent user experience, are necessary. It increases consumer engagement and operational efficiencies (for example, faster checkouts).

One thing is sure, whatever approach is chosen, there should be a clear business case, and banks need to consider mobile payments as part of a broader digital wallet strategy combining, e.g., account-to-account payments and making their app one of the top services users interact with daily.

Banks will need to assess how to make their wallets more attractive for consumers over the open wallets that are commonplace now, for example, from big techs. If a single bank enables only its own cards to be provisioned to its wallet and not from competing card issuers, some users might see this as a drawback.

Therefore, it is essential that banks are aware of the digital trends and have a clear strategy for improving customer value, whether it is one of the value-added services mentioned earlier or providing contextual experiences such as automatically proposing the most cost-efficient payment means (debit, credit, A2A, etc.) when payment is about to be initiated.

Banks have a unique opportunity to strengthen their identity and deepen customer relationships by offering embedded payments in their own mobile apps and under their brands. Your own branded app allows financial institutions and similar entities to influence the user experience directly. By creating a top-of-wallet experience, banks can position themselves as central players in customers’ digital lives.

Our Convego® CloudPay solution is designed for banks looking to stay at the heart of their customers’ digital lives. It leverages Host Card Emulation (HCE) and Secure Element (SE) technologies to enable secure contactless transactions while offering customization options. -Banks can tailor the wallet to include features such as loyalty rewards, ticketing services, or even regional payment methods on both Android and iOS devices.

G+D Netcetera’s solutions ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and offer advanced security features, together with tokenization, to protect sensitive data. Most importantly, they empower banks to maintain a direct relationship with their customers by integrating seamlessly into their existing ecosystem.

Convego® CloudPay is a comprehensive solution for any wallet issuer since it integrates different mobile contactless payment capabilities that enhance customer engagement in today’s competitive market.

In our daily lives, we interact with many wallets and mobile apps designed to simplify various activities. By incorporating payment capabilities into applications initially designed for booking or shopping, Convego® CloudPay enables point-of-sale payment functionality that significantly increases user engagement and app traffic. This transformation allows service providers to make payment an integrated part of their value proposition, offering customers not just their primary service but also a new way of paying.

The integration helps brands maintain relevance in an increasingly digital marketplace where consumers expect seamless experiences. By offering modern payment solutions that align with evolving consumer expectations for convenience and technology, wallet issuers can create stronger bonds with their customers through all-in-one wallet solutions. This comprehensive approach eliminates the need for multiple apps and positions the issuer’s solution as the customer’s primary financial tool.

The increased traffic within these enhanced applications creates valuable opportunities to build ecosystems and interact more frequently with clients. It enables personalized marketing, cross-selling opportunities, and deeper customer relationships.
Furthermore, Convego® CloudPay’s support for global and local payment card brands, such as Mastercard, Visa, eftpos, or giro card, ensures that wallet providers can adapt to diverse customer needs across different markets.

Through these capabilities, non-traditional financial service providers can effectively compete by transforming their existing applications into comprehensive payment solutions that drive engagement, loyalty, and long-term customer value in an increasingly competitive digital payments landscape.

Let’s use this shift in the digital wallet landscape and make it a success for all!