Post-pandemic, our lifestyle is closer to smartphones than ever. Regardless of day or night, smartphones are used in various moments of life. From grocery shopping and checking to-dos to meditation and exercise, we plan and solve many things through our smartphones.

That’s why companies with payment products are putting a lot of time and effort into improving the mobile payment experience. One of the best ways to make the payment experience for cardholders easy and simple is to integrate with popular digital wallets. The numbers clearly show that people love to use digital wallets for the reason of their simplicity and easiness. The number of users of mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay is expected to soon reach nearly a billion and it will continue to grow. 

So, will integrating Apple Pay or Google Pay into the payment products help improve my business? 

Absolutely. By supporting several wallet solutions, such as ApplePay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, you tap into a wider audience and are able to attract more customers. If your payment product supports both iOS and Android-based digital wallets, more cardholders can enjoy a convenient payment experience.

Is it easy to integrate my payment solution to popular digital wallets like Apple Pay or Google Pay?

The answer is yes and no. This question is actually similar to asking if it is easy to cook a great dinner at your housewarming party, by yourself.

Let’s say you have moved to a new house, and you are going to invite your closest friends to cook them the Squid Ink Paella that you ate with these friends in Spain. You are a foodie, but you don’t cook yourself at home that often. For you, preparing fresh ingredients and cooking alone might not be easy.

At this point, how would you feel if there was a service that would allow you to present great cuisine with only minimal effort? 

Complex processes can be easy with the help of experts. What if the best ingredients are carefully selected, all cut to size and delivered with the perfect sauce at your door? Then all you have to do is turn on the oven, add the ingredients and sauce, wait, and then plate it beautifully. Integrating digital wallets with the right partner can be like this. You can leave the complicated and difficult parts to your partner and integrate popular digital wallets into your products with minimal effort.

Do you want to integrate your digital wallet with a reliable partner with minimal time and effort?

Here is the list of essentials to consider when choosing the right partner:

1. Is the partner experienced in digital wallet integration?  

Integrating the payment solution with a digital wallet on your own can be challenging. The process requires managing several key stakeholders and multilateral communication with digital wallet providers such as Apple and Google and scheme providers like Visa or Mastercard. If you haven’t done similar projects before, the exchange of documents and materials to get started can be surprisingly complex. Working with multiple stakeholders means that unexpected things often happen. To get the support you deserve, you should ask yourself whether your partner has the will and experience to guide you through a digital wallet project. Because only sufficient experience will bring the know-how that can lead to a quick and trouble-free integration process.

2. Is the partner truly offering a turn-key service for you?

It is always challenging to compare partners, especially regarding the service they provide. They might say ‘turn-key’ but you end up doing all the heavy lifting. For most issuers, a digital wallet implementation is a once-in-a-long-time project. This means that in-house knowledge and practices required to complete the implementation fast and efficiently rarely pre-exist. That is why your partner should be able to offer the required knowledge and best practices and do most of the heavy lifting by guiding you through it all. 

3. Does the partner bring value in terms of saving time and money?

How smooth the digital wallet implementation goes is a critical factor, both on the technical implementation side and the business marketing side, that significantly affects the launch window of your mobile payment solution. Integrating the products with a wallet provider is not only a technical exercise. You need to plan and showcase your marketing visuals and user activation efforts to the wallet provider after the digital wallet launch. Hence it is important to see and understand the actual lead time for the integration project. The partner should be able to demonstrate to you how they can support you and reduce the time and cost related to a digital wallet implementation.

4. Can the partner manage life in production well? 

When the integration of digital wallets into payment products is done, life in production starts. Part of the life in production is that wallet providers like Apple and Google require reports, for example, on transactions done and declined, categorised and structured as per their definition. Implementing and automating these reports can be surprisingly time-consuming when done for the first time. Digital wallet providers, as well as card schemes, regularly publish new requirements that usually require analysis and updates to the implementation. Compliance with these requirements is mandatory but with the right partner, it can be effortless.

To all of these questions, Enfuce can confidently answer YES.

Enfuce has led the launch of global digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay in Northern Europe. In 2017, Apple Pay was first launched in Finland as Enfuce completed its first implementation project with its customer. As a result of years of experience and several projects, Enfuce has been able to communicate flexibly with digital wallet providers and card schemes. The ongoing management of digital wallets and the necessary elements are already in the hands of Enfuce’s experts. Enfuce also offers 24/7 fraud monitoring to help cardholders keep their cards safe from potential threats anytime, anywhere.

Enfuce has worked with Visa and Mastercard to implement more than 10 global digital wallets for European customers on a yearly basis. This year we expect significant growth, more than doubling the number of digital wallet projects. Do you want to build the ultimate digital wallet integration for your products with Enfuce? Contact us!