Bank of America Steps Up its Mobile Wallet Operations

Bank of America has been hard at work stepping up its mobile payments and mobile wallet options, and recently, it dropped word our way about its latest effort on this front. The company announced that it was adding some PayPal options to its wallet, which would allow for quick and easy adding of credit and debit cards to a PayPal account direct from the mobile banking app.

This is actually the first tangible step in a project that was conceptually around since July of last year, reports note, and it’s not going to be the last. By the end of the year, the word is that customers will be able to add those same cards from within PayPal proper.

Bank of America’s head of enterprise payments Mark Monaco noted “It’s all about providing our customers the most convenient and secure payments experience possible. As the face of money continues to become more digital, Bank of America remains committed to giving our customers the ability to use any major wallet or payment method they choose, including PayPal.”

With Bank of America customers increasingly turning to mobile options and digital in general—such transactions have doubled over the last year based on the over 50 million active cards in Bank of America’s collective control—adding options like these just makes sense overall. It’s like Monaco just noted; why wouldn’t a bank give its customers access to what its customers so obviously want? There’s literally no percentage in stiffing your own user base, especially not when those users can go down the street to a competitor and get the services desired.

What’s more, PayPal will likely be welcoming this move as well; with eBay decoupling from the company actively, PayPal’s going to need to fill in that gap. The Bank of America trade could go some way to doing that, and if PayPal branches out into other banks it may well be able to carry on as though eBay never existed.

Giving the customer what they want is good business, and in the end, Bank of America is demonstrating that some truths never change no matter how old they get.