Mobile Payments Leader Paysafe Group’s Rapid Transfer Eyes American Expansion
We’ve heard from Paysafe Group more than once about its various advances in mobile payments, mobile banking and the like, and now, they’ve dropped word our way about a whole new step forward. Having secured a hefty dollop of territory in Europe, they’re making a move to head into the United States, thanks in large part to a new partnership with the Skrill digital wallet.
Paysafe Group’s Rapid Transfer, a tool that helps give mobile banking the convenience and accessibility of mobile payments, offers high-speed identity and verification tools to make it easier to transfer cash from one point to another, opening up the potential for instant online payments from a bank account directly.
The tool has already done well in Europe, now available in 18 different countries on the continent. Now, the new connection with Skrill will open up access to the system in the US. Those buying from a Skrill merchant client, reports note, will be able to make those instant online payments. Customers don’t even have to leave the merchant’s website to make the transfer—as long as the merchant accepts wire transfer or automated clearinghouse (ACH) payments, which improves the convenience several times over.
This works especially well for consumers who prefer online banking to credit cards in terms of security, and given that around a third of US consumers—30 percent—have concerns about fraud in ecommerce, it might be a more appealing notion than some realize.
Paysafe’s tool will likely meet with a welcoming population in the US. One of mobile payments’ biggest issues to overcome is security, and by putting the power of direct transfer to work, Paysafe may have found one of the best ways to beat it. However, given that Skrill isn’t exactly a well-known product in the US—certainly not as compares to Apple Pay or any of the other “Pays” as they’re known—Paysafe may have a bit of a challenge in front of it in terms of getting users into the fold.
However, Paysafe also has extensive experience and resources to draw on thanks to its successful run in Europe, and that could be just the arsenal it needs to better establish a beachhead in the US market. It will be interesting to see what kind of move Paysafe can make here, because while it will have a tough time ahead, it’s also got plenty to back its proposition up.