Huge New Mobile Payments Push Comes From German Bank Coalition
With Apple Pay’s announcement of a push into the German market just a couple weeks old now, it might be something of a surprise to see how hard the German mobile payments market is pushing back. Reports from a group of German banks suggest that several new smart wallet features will be rolling out into German market, and over the course of the next few days, no less.
The membership of Bundesverband der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken—try saying that three times fast!—will soon have access to contactless payments via digital token technology from Mastercard and Visa. Android users will be able to put the system to work by using the VR BankingApp app found ostensibly on Google Play when it goes live.
When the system goes live—it’s actually expected to go live today, August 13—it will be available for 85 percent of the 915 member banks involved in Bundesverband der Deutschen Volksbanken und Raiffeisenbanken. It’s also the country’s first banking group that would allow contactless mobile payments systems into its customers’ hands, a big step forward by any measure. This isn’t the first such move in the region, though; a pilot program has been running since June at Volksbank Mittelhessen and VR Bank HessenLand, and this after a smaller pilot program for bank employees back in December.
Essentially, this isn’t a response to Apple’s overtures, but a move that’s been in the making for some time. Given that the original pilots go back almost nine months, and the wider-scale pilots almost three months, it’s clear that the banks have been testing this concept to within an inch of its life before rolling it out into wider scale. Perhaps there might have been some acceleration of the schedule—perhaps the wider-market pilot would have been three full months—thanks to Apple’s entrance into the market, but that’s not out of line. Surely the banks wouldn’t have wanted to lose first-mover advantage—or something close to it—because Apple showed up. Granted, Apple’s a walled garden and it looks like most of the banks’ push is focused on Android, but still.
Options are always good in a competitive market, and German customers should have quite a few in short order. The impact on the market should be a sight to see.